Tuesday, December 8, 2009

A leaf litter frog

Today a photo of a leaf litter frog from national park El Imposible in El Salvador. I forget the name of the species, but this time let's not talk about the frog - let's talk about the photo. First I should perhaps mention I don't consider myself an accomplished photographer by any means. I may illustrate this by admitting that I use a point-and-shoot camera, and that I rarely use manual camera settings. I'm very much an amateur. This frog photo for example has many technical imperfections, the most obvious perhaps the blur in the top middle of the frame.

Also, the frog is poorly lit and barely visible.

Yet I like this photo a lot, and I think its technical imperfections accidentally translated into compositional strengths. I shot several frames of this tiny frog (2 cm in length), and all the others show an over-exposed frog in direct sunlight, with very little depth in the photo. Here at least we do experience depth, and the blurring in the top center of the leaf for me only exemplifies the transient quality of sunlight on the forest floor, in the obscure, shimmery world this little frog inhabits.

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