One of the unique, and fearsome, creatures of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona is the Gila monster. Although its bite is very painful to humans, it is rarely fatal. We were lucky to be able to photograph this venomous lizard at the edge of the artificial pond that we use to capture bats in flight. The reptile’s tongue flickers extremely fast, and it took several attempts -- at 14 frames per second -- to capture it. The only thing I did to this image in post-processing was to darken the periphery of the frame while lightening the Gila monster a little. I did this using the burn and dodge tool in Photoshop. This simple technique directs the attention on the subject in a very subtle way. My settings for this shot were 1/3200, f/11, and using auto ISO I got 1250 in the early morning light.
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