Dune Sand Gecko

[Bob Reimer]

I was out last Friday night doing some light trapping for insects with some friends in the desert south of Al Ain. One of my friends is a reptile expert who spotted this female Dune Sand Gecko (Stenodactylus doriae). She kindly posed for about 15 minutes. I think we had enough before she did. I like this head on shot of her. I also have a couple portraits I like, one with her licking the eye but the HAP would have problems with and another they would be happy with but doesn't show the behaviour.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-180 Micro @ 150mm, f/11, 1/60, -0.7 EV Aperture Priority, ISO 400, Dual SB-R200s, SU-800. Neutral Picture Control. Converted, levelled, cropped in Capture NX to 16-bit TIF, APATS Quick Mask to fill in canvas to keep entire tail after rotation.

I remember Artie or RO'T demonstrating a technique for getting rid of the hot spots on the nose from the flash at the Silver Salmon Creek IPT last summer but I can't remember the steps.

[Gus Cobos]

Great capture Bob,
I like the composition and the details on this little guy...:)

[Julie Kenward]

Wonderful pose! That tail in the BG really leads your eye right in. I didn't even notice the hot spots on the nose until you said something because I was so busy looking deep into the image. Very nice!

[John Cooper]

Hi Bob - You have caught this Gecko in an interesting pose but the image suffers from under exposure. It sounds as if you captured the image in RAW so a little more tweaking could throw some light on the subject.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Bob Love this image !!! Exposure wise I like it as presented. I can seen John's point of view for lightening and makes sense. Personally would leave as it is for the feel. It is giving me some information. Would probably make one with the lighter conversion which would not give the night feel !!

If anything I would like seeing a little more room around the little guy !!

btw for the nose just zoom in and clone into the shiny spot. It is very small. For larger areas we usually use Robet's quick mask technique.

[Robert Amoruso]

Hi Bob, nice to see you here.

Clone the nose shine using the clone tool. I brought the image into PS and using a levels adjustment and adjusted the white point slider holding down the ALT key until white appeared (not the noise shine - some other highlight). I then adjusted the mid-tone slider to increase the luminance. It looked good so give it a try.

Love the pose and your composition.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Bob, really, realy cool shot. Love everything about it, Congrats.

[Bob Allen]

Nice use of vertical composition. Thank you for keeping the tail in the image. While I prefer not to have the hotspot on the nose, some other macro shooters feel that a few of them help to convey depth.

It is a bit underexposed, however, this is a nocturnal animal and, IMHO, this exposure conveys that nighttime feel. There is also the very real chance that we all use different gamma settings. I use Macintosh @1.8 which displays brighter than Windows displays @2.2.

We have nocturnal geckos in our deserts here in southern California, USA, but I've never seen them elevate themselves above the sand like that. A great adaptation to get ones innards away from really hot sand.

[Chris Ober]

Very cool and different shot. A little more light would be nice. Good you got the whole tail in the shot.

[Dave Phillips]

very nice.....looks better in sRGB for most browsers