This is an African bush viper, and as the name implies, I kept my distance from it by using a telephoto lens. I am extremely uncomfortable photographing venomous snakes, but I push myself to do it because I want the pictures. Snakes are particularly difficult to get sharp, frame-filling compositions because, when they are coiled, depth of field is a problem. Especially when they have beautiful markings or pronounced scales, I want to be able to show those features with tack sharp clarity. As you can see here, the head and the foreground coil are on different planes and that's the challenge. When shooting from the side, it's usually not possible to render the entire reptile in sharp focus. For this picture, my settings were 1/250, f/16, 1250 ISO and my lens was the Canon 100-400mm zoom.
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