Adventures in photographing a boa *pic*

Cleaning today and I pulled this guy out, an anerythristic, decided to take a photo and get a weight on him, but he had other plans.... First up was the cleaning, which ment getting him out. He is not a pain, but don't hold still either. The whole interaction I had with him, he was totaly aware of me. After I got him into the the holder tub, I cleaned his cage, then decided to just to snap a couple pics of him... I pulled the lid off the holder tub and this is where it got fun. He was watching me. Fully aware of me... I moved to one side of the tub, he would watch me. I moved to another place, he would watch. I had a long lens on the camera, a 100mm macro lens cause I wanted close, but I started to realize its going to be hard to show off his body with the long lens with out backing up and this would make him out of arms reach if he decided to run. I gave up after one shot since he was watching me intently. I remove him from the holder tub and decide to try and weigh him...

He absolutly refused to go into the bowl on the scale, it was like trying to controll water from a busted pipe! I figured he had enough and put him back in his clean home.

Never once did he try to snap at me, hiss, curl up in a strike pose, in fact I came close to his trap a few time while I was working with him. He has a cool speckled belly I want to try to photograph later :)

Can you say, "Alert" :D

http://home.comcast.net/~slitherjef/boas/rockyhead.jpg

Nice pic. I can never get them to hold still while I try to snap pics. I wish I had a camera that took the quality that your does. :cool:

How do you do it. I try taking pics of mine and only about 3 out of 700 pics turn out good.

gorgeous picture! :D

Awesome picture! How did you *do* that? Jeez, the pictures I posted of Zelda were the best ones out of tons!! She never holds still!! Tell me your secret! Great picture :bow:

Flash helps... alot :) So does a high ISO on the camera, a fast shutter speed. Oh, can't forget luck :)

If you are interested here are the details:
Shot with a canon 30D DSLR camera and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens stopped down to f/8 (the lens has a very shallow depth of field) ISO was set to 400. Shutter speed 1/200 sec and on board flash. I also have a removable flash unit that I don't use as much as I should. I should set up a light tent