What are you looking at?

[Lauren Sobkoviak]

While wandering the Juniper and scrub lands just east of Redmond, Oregon, I came across this Western Fence Lizard sunning on a tree stump. As I approached, the critter dove down far side of the trunk. However, I didn't see the lizard scampering through the brush for cover, so I slowly approached the stump. As I moved my line of sight around the left side of the wood, the lizard came into view. He suddenly rose up, presented his beautiful underside to me and froze. I took this photograph at that time.

Image was taken with built-in flash at settings of 1/125th a second at f/8. I used the flash on the Canon Digital Rebel as I knew portions of the subject would be in shadow if he was where I thought he would be. The lens used was the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM at full zoom with Mode 1 stabilization on. Camera was handheld.

The weather was typical of central Oregon in the Summer with a cloudless sky and mid 90s temp. The photograph was taken just past noon with a high, bright sun.

[D. Robert Franz]

Great looking lizard and an interesting pose. The image is quite busy which detracts from it. Not sure what you could have done different..

[James Shadle]

Lauren,
That is a dang cool lookin' lizard.
I like the limited DOF so just the face is in critical focus.

This was a win / lose situation/.
The flash offered some pop to your subject, but at the same time it made the light colors twiggs pop as well.

With out flash the twiggs would not be as distracting. At the same time the lizard might not hang around for a long exposure!

[Jasper Doest]

Lauren,

First of all I'm impressed the way you captured this lizard in the field while wandering around. Most lizards see you before you see them and are really fast. The use of flash really helped here and the pose really works well. The limited DOF is a bit too limited for my taste but by adding DOFF you also would have gotten more distracting elements in frame. Difficult to say what would have been best to do.

[Lauren Sobkoviak]

When the lizard saw me and dove out of sight, it took me about five minutes to slowly moving around the stump to locate him again and then to raise the camera. I knew there would be distracting elements in the image, and made an effort to use the foreground weeds as an assist in framing the head of the creature, balancing them with the trunk. I hoped they wouldn't be all that distracting.