David's Page

Monday, August 22, 2005

This is a toad, one of many living in Mary's driveway. I shot the photo of him last Thursday night.

At 11:50 PM, Nuge said...: That is a cute little toad. Great capture, David. I like how you decided to go shallow on the depth and get low for the big eyes to really pop out. Tell us how you sneaked up on him for the straight shot. What was the light source?
At 4:29 AM, David said...: The photo would really look better if the photoshop editing ws better done, but I was in a hurry. Sneaking up to him wasn't hard, these things are all over her driveway. He did hop around a bit causing me to make a few attempts.
The light source is a floodlight on the corner of her house. It draws shitloads of insects and the toads gather under it for feeding. Sometimes there are dozens of them. There is an amzing network of spiders also, if you stand under the light long enough you will get to see one scurry over his web, snatch an insect, devour it and wrap it for later. This past weekend there were probably 15 of the big fat-bellied things up there.
As far as the depth goes, I shot that with my little Canon point and shoot in P mode. There was such little light that it shot wide open and rather slow. I had the camera braced on the ground to keep it still. I would have to look in photoshop to be sure, but I think it was around 1 sec at f1.8.