a bonanza of lizards

So I was reading the thread about musical inspiration and I was thinking about how for me music is often more about motivation. ; I'd mentioned how I sometimes use a peppy bit of music to motivate me to process through some pictures.

I started playing something (Jonny Grey, by Eifel 65, it's got this fast moving feel that sort of propels me along) and opened up Lightroom, and it went straight to a page that had a bunch of reptile pictures I took a while back. ; That became my theme, and.. well, here we are.

I fear that this mindset is not entirely conducive to independent analysis of my pictures and of how to process them, I get sort of impulsive and use a rather slapdash approach of processing in order to move on to the next image. ; But let's see what I came up with.
Hmm.. I was going to skip expando this time, but I can't seem to get the images to display full res without it. ; I'll put it back in and try to figure out what's going on later.

The first two are from animals that a cousin used to keep, I had the chance to shoot them a while back and had a lot of fun. ; I think this first one is some sort of monitor, but I forgot the specific species. ; It was a very stocky, muscular looking lizard, this shot may make it seem imposing but as I seem to recall it was fairly well mannered.
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/IMG_1847.jpg[/expando]


I believe this next one is a leopard gecko. ; Geckos have some of the neatest eyes in the animal kingdom. ; Both this and the previous shots were taken with the humble kit lens, right in the sweet spot of F8. ; Back in my digital rebel mark one days.
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/IMG_1828.jpg[/expando]

Now we have to jump forwards in time from 2004 to 2007, time has passed and my camera has been upgraded to the 30D, the lenses used are the Tamron 28-75 and the Canon 70-200F4. ; Setting is the Shedd Aquarium, in Chicago, they had a temporary lizard exhibit. ; I believe I've posted pictures from it before, maybe of the star of the attraction, a komodo dragon. ; The komodo was certainly impressive, but frankly I find the other lizards a lot more interesting and just downright cool. ; So it's time to give them some love.

We start off, well.. this thing. ; I think it's another monitor, but I can't for the life of me remember what kind. ; Based on a wikipedia hunt I'd guess it's a crocodile monitor. ; Another quite solidly built monitor, this thing was huge. ; Notice the coloration, I kept thinking that it looked pixelated. ; Apologies if this is a frustrating angle.. I just didn't know how to shoot this beasty, I tend to default to doing headshots if I can't figure out how else to handle them.
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_9822.jpg[/expando]

Next up is another unknown, it might be another monitor, one of the leaner, more arboreal kinds.
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_0111.jpg[/expando]

Who doesn't love a day gecko? ; I certainly don't.. don't not love them... ; Oy that's awkward. ; No idea on the specific species, but I know it's a day gecko, the almost neon green coloration is the tipoff. ; Honestly it's brighter in person than I could manage to recreate here. ; I often worry about going too far with color, but this time I couldn't get it strong enough to match the real thing. ; It's demonstrating what geckos do so well, sticking to just about any surface. ; The explanation of how they do that gets rather interesting, apparently the current thinking is that it may involve the van der Waals force, the forces at work on the molecular level. ; There is research at work to understand this phenomenon and perhaps harness it for human use, the wikipedia article on geckos has a little more info on what is currently known about it.
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_0098.jpg[/expando]

Ahh, timing. ; No idea on the species, but isn't the heavy armor look of the scales magnificent? ; And yep, another one with forked tongues.
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_0018.jpg[/expando]

As we come to the end of this little exhibition (at least of my post on it) I must spend some quality time with the chameleons. ; Still no idea of the specific species, I gotta start taking pictures of the name plates so I can record the species for later.
Maybe I am exaggerating their colors. ; I can't help myself. ; But they're such a spectacular group of animals. ; Such a contrast of beautiful and ugly. ; Bright colors, ugly lines, bizarre eyes. ; I'm pretty sure I've posted pictures of this individual before too, but it was years ago and I just can't remember which I used previously.
I'll accept that maybe the DOF is too shallow, but for all of these pictures I was operating at the edges of what was possible in terms of light. ; This was shot at 200mm, F4, 1/100 at ISO 1600. ;
[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_0080.jpg[/expando]

For the last of the collection I'm posting one that might be over processed. ; But I was carried away by the music, what can I say.. I just had to use a heavy handed velvia filter to make this colorful little guy (or girl, no idea on the gender, I think they're often sexually dimorphic (meaning the sexes look different) but since I don't even know the species I can't look it up to see) look even edgier.

[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_0060.jpg[/expando]
I don't expect to get a chance to shoot such as wide and spectacular a variety of lizards as this again for some time. ; The exhibit is long gone with no sign of it returning, that leaves me with a comparatively restricted choice of local zoo animals or else a handful of wild snakes that I might be able to find.

It's frustrating.. but looking ahead to this year I'm on a mission to focus on my favored zoo mammals for this year's photo contest. ; There's been some really good entries in the past few years, the winner last year was an edgy B&W shot of a giraffe with a baby giraffe. ; I just can't do that kind of style, it's not my way, but this year it's time to get serious. ; Eye of the tiger and all that.. while I'm shooting tigers.. and all that.

edited to re-expando all the pictures

 

Very cool. I love the eyes on the first 2, and the skin texture on all of them is very interesting. We see a lot of the small lizards here in FL, especially inside pool lanais, most likely to get away from predators. I just wish they'd stay outside. The little rascals are FAST, and once in the house, I'm more than likely to find them a few months later under the sofa, dried up like an Egyptian mummy.

Erich

 

My name is Johnny Grey,
wont you play with me.



Perfect song for processing lizard photos! ; I like the second to last photo. ; He looks like a little old man come to check you out and then shoo you away!

 

Yeah, Erich, I know you Floridians get a lot more lizards to play with than us midwesterners do. ; I actually saw my first Florida gecko last year. ; I was so stupidly excited... ; I honestly didn't know that Florida had geckos, I saw it on the wall of the outside of the Crystal Palace and I was just giddy, all hurrying to get my camera out so that I could perhaps get a bad low light picture of it before I had to go inside for dinner.

You have to understand.. I know that geckos are known for hanging out on walls, that some people intentionally try to get them to live inside their houses to feast on local insects. ; But I'd never seen it, this was my first proper wall gecko.

Someone who saw my getting all excited over seeing it told me that yes, Floridians have plenty of geckos. ; I gather he was amused at how excited I was over it. ; Hehe, I'm happy to provide amusement.


Mind you.. ; I'm still happy to live where I do. ; You know why? ; We have almost nothing here THAT CAN KILL ME. ; I'm sure those of you that live with those animals have come to terms with this, well I haven't. ; I've only recently found out that we have any possibly venomous snakes at all living up at my latitude, but they're largely confined to specific areas. ; Last year after my Disney trip I went on a jaunt out to the coast and I vividly remember stopping off at a rest stop on the way and seeing a sign warning of the potentially deadly snakes that live in the region. ; That was kind of freaky.

You don't see signs like that where I live. ; I spend plenty of time complaining about how flat it is here (not that Florida is different, but I spent a fraction of my childhood in Colorado so Illinois is always held up to that as a comparison) but at least I don't have to be on alert for deadly snakes. ; It appears we do have some, and I may yet come into contact with them (and if I do I'm getting a picture of it), but.. by and large the wildlife out here is placed firmly in the pest category, rather than the "it could kill you if you're not careful" group. ; Frankly the most dangerous thing I'm likely to encounter is a tick infected with lyme disease or maybe a mosquito with West Nile Virus.

I wish we had iguanas running free in the wild, though. ; Oh, I know they're a pest, I appreciate the problems that can be caused by a non native species.. but I LIKE iguanas. ; I find them charming, in a grumpy, quirky sort of way. ; Yeah, the big ones get big enough to be able to hurt you just by whipping you with their tails.. but they also get such spectacular coloring. ; And they're not predators. ; Frankly anything that big and bad looking that isn't looking at you figuring out if you're good to eat is a good thing in my book. ; I'm sure they're still willing to view you as a threat, but I'd prefer threat to food any day.

 

Dude.. seriously, you have JESUS LIZARDS?

That was my one disappointment from that lizard exhibition. ; The species list said they'd have basilisk lizards, but that particular species was absent. ; Just an empty cage. ; I was so looking forward to getting a shot of that one. ; I've had a chance to shoot one of those before, but I wanted another one. ; Oh well.

I've heard of the danger of falling iguanas. ; I heard a story of some well meaning woman who found a catatonic iguana and took it inside because she was worried about its health. ; I love that. ; I mean.. I love the idea that there are people out there who'd find a dormant iguana and worry about it and actually take it inside their homes. ; I'm so used to the "eww, lizards" reaction that the idea of someone reacting like that warms my heart.

Anyway, the story ends predictably.. the iguana warmed up, woke up, and freaked out. ; That was probably not a good scene.

Honestly I'm sad to hear of iguanas dying.. but I can accept that they're an invasive species and that it's probably a useful thing to have less of them lounging about.

I'm still surprised to hear of the variety of lizards that you've got running amuck down there. ; I assume that most of those are invasive? ; So far as I know none of those should be there except the green anoles. ; I've also heard tales of pythons growing enormous and ending up in local swamps and such. ; Snakes I don't deal with as well.. stories like that make me quite happy to be living up here. ; The only snakes I've encountered up here were terrified of me, and I'm happy leaving it at that. ; Because I don't want them to realize how scared I was of them.

Okay, time for a little bonus lizard action. ; So I didn't get basilisk lizards.. but I did this a shot of this freaky little fellow:

[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/_MG_9930.jpg[/expando]

I think that's a frilled lizard. ; At rest it has an interesting quality to it, but those of you who haven't seen one in action owe it to yourselves to google frilled lizards and to try to find a video of one when it's aggravated. ; They are so funny when they get up on two legs.

I'm not certain that's what that is, though.. the videos show an animal that folds its frills up into a neat and tidy package, rather than apparently leaving them loose like this fellow did. ; So maybe I've misidentified it.

Also, speaking of knight anoles..

[expando]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/NomadSoul76/lizards/IMG_1849.jpg[/expando]

I believe that's one, but again I'm working from memory from many years ago, I can't be sure. ; This is another one from the earlier episode, not from the aquarium exhibit. ; I liked the way it appeared to be expressing its displeasure at being handled. ; Perhaps it's relevant to mention that I've heard that these guys bite hard. ; Yeah, I wouldn't have been the one handling it.

I did handle one of these lizards. ; The adorable crested gecko.

[expando]http://images.fotopic.net/ylnc9d.jpg[/expando]

I know I've posted that pic before, but I'm repeating it. ; While I was taking that shot it jumped onto my camera. ; Amazingly it left no marks on the lens, this thing has to be one of the cleanest animals I've ever dealt with.

It was a really neat critter. ; It was completely okay with being handled, and it was kind of soft to the touch. ; It was like this cuddly little teddy bear of a lizard. ; It stuck to you with gecko feet, rather than the prickly iguana feet that I'd experienced before (it didn't hurt, but dang but those claws dug into my skin and made it hard to peel that fellow off of me). ; You don't deal with one if you're uncertain about lizards, you could end up with it on your head with little to no warning, but.. it was a very peasant lizard to deal with.

BTW, the iguana was a lot of fun too. ; It was a younger, smaller animal. ; It was tame, and used to being handled. ; It liked being on me, I gather it enjoyed the warmth I provided. ; It really did not want to go back into its cage, and that's where the trouble started. ; The claws didn't hurt.. unless you were trying to remove it when it didn't want to go. ; I'd try to remove it with my other hand and it'd end up stuck to that hand. ; After juggling it for a while I finally managed to remove it and get it stashed away in its cage.

This was back in high school.. I have a story about that. ; That was from the "companion animal biology" class. ; Apparently some time in the past they had a snake get loose and didn't see it for quite a while. ; Eventually they found it again, after it had spent a long time living in the ducts eating mice.

So again, I appreciate that iguanas are invasive.. but.. darnit, I just love the idea of going out in the morning and seeing comatose iguanas littering the neighborhood. ; That image just amuses the heck out of me. ; The weirdest thing I ever saw was one morning when I found my garage door covered in tiny snails. ; Seriously.. I don't know why they were there, but they seemed to stay there, I ended up with hundreds of tiny dead snails stuck to my garage door. ; It was WEIRD. ; It wasn't really a mess, they were so small that they amounted to very little.

Maybe it's for the best.. I'd probably end up doing something silly like gathering a bunch of iguanas in a row and putting tiny little mexican hats on them and trying to set up some sort of a posed scene. ; The tale of the iguana kid, or something like that.

 

I'm starting to think I need to go on safari in Florida.

That iguana picture is just spectacular. ; They're such amazing looking animals. ; I'll continue my wildlife photography attempts around here.. but I will never, ever, get a picture of anything that amazing looking.

So I looked into that invasive species list. ; You (in the sense of Florida in general, I get the idea that some of these are still regional) have got CAPYBARAS! ; This just gets better and better. ; Oooh.. and escaped laboratory monkeys. ; That never sounds good.

I was getting bummed looking at my reptile pictures, thinking how to even get another shot at that kind of a variety of lizards in captivity won't be too easy. ; I'd have to go on a hunt through area zoos to try to find one with a heavy reptile count. ; And in the wild, well.. I was thinking I'd just have to forget about it. ; They're from fairly exotic ports of call that I'm likely never to go to.

Then I look through this list. ; There's a chameleon species in there. ; Also two of my favored geckos, a day gecko and the tokay gecko.

Feh.. all Illinois has in the way of invasive animals are some beetles, the ever popular zebra mussel, and the asian carp that are causing such concern as they make their way towards Lake Michigan where they could potentially wipe out the fishery and destroy the fishing industry here.

Oh yeah, and a population of parakeets in Chicago. ; So at least that's fun.