I took this picture during one of my frog and reptile workshops in St. Louis. It is a lemon hourglass frog native to Central and South America. They are very small -- about the size of your thumbnail. I used a 50mm macro lens for the shot along with a ring flash. Had I used a typical portable flash that sits in the hot shoe on top of the camera, the light would illuminate the dorsal side of the frog leaving the ventral side in shadow. The contrast would be unattractive. A ring flash simulates diffused daylight outdoors and envelopes the tiny frog with even light. The workshop takes place in a hotel conference room with several shooting stations, and I have a variety of plants and flowers that act as natural environments. Because depth of field is so shallow with macro photography, I recommend to the participants they use f/32 for all their pictures. My settings for this image were 1/160, f/32, and 250 ISO. I hand held the shot. Although I use the camera's autofocus feature with success, to fine tune the focus on a particular place on the frog -- such as an eye -- I will move the camera closer to and farther from the subject in tiny increments. My next frog and reptile workshop is this coming June 12 & 13. In Photoshop, I cloned out the reflection of the ring flash in the eyes.
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