Rattlesnake Photos

This is a photo of a western diamondback rattlesnake. This is one of my specialties...Photographing snakes. In fact, for some time I was fairly well known for my rattlesnake photos. This particular image was taken with a Canon T3 with a 70-300 F4-5.6 lens. As this blog continues, I will show more rattlesnake photos that I took up close with no zoom. For now, lets talk about this image. There are some that I will be posting later that are of the same snake. I got quite a few decent shots on this shoot. 

Why did I use the lens that I chose to use? For one...Safety. I am not as fast as I used to be. Not that I was faster than a striking rattlesnake, but I was a lot more agile 10 years ago. Being able to keep my distance I am able to get better shots. I found I wasn't getting as natural of reactions of the snake being right up on it. Being further away I am able to show more of the snake in its natural posture or behavior. 

Next reason is for the bokeh...The blurring of the background. Since I can't go off and purchase the best of the best equipment, I have to be able to take advantage of the tools I do have. My 18-55 mm kit lens will not blow the background out near as well as the 70-300 mm. By putting distance between myself and the subject I get more of a background blur. My depth of field becomes much narrower or shallow. This works the same way as placing the subject further from the background while doing portrait shots. You can manipulate the blur of the background by doing this.