This is an eyelash viper, one of Costa Rica’s venomous snakes. I will never seek out dangerous snakes in the wild -- it’s just too risky. In captivity, they can be handled by a metal rod with a hook on the end, so with one person making sure the snake isn’t a threat while others are photographing, the situation is safe. I used a telephoto lens to remain ‘outside of the striking distance’, but that meant that complete depth of field was a challenge. I used 1/200 and f/9 for this picture, and the ISO was set at 2000. The bottom portion of the flower isn’t as sharp as I would have liked, but to use a smaller lens aperture meant that the ISO would have to be raised. I was trying to keep the ISO low, if possible, so I sacrificed a bit of DOF -- something I don't usually like to do. Diffused light in this kind of shot looks much better and much more natural in my opinion than flash, and besides, flash might spook the snake. The original background was black, and I liked it, but again I wanted a natural looking image so I replaced it with an out of focus foliage background.
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