Lizard Lips

I was doing some senior portraits in the Garden of the Gods last month, and I had my client posed on a large rock formation (go figure). There were tourists and hikers all around. I could hear a guy on the other side of the rock exclaiming about something, and then he came around to our side and told me that he saw a cool lizard and insisted that I take a picture of it. I get this a lot. "Hey you should take a picture of this!" Okay, to be honest, that can be a little annoying, especially when I'm in the middle of a shoot and I'm trying to give my full attention to my client, but in this case I ended up with a blog-worthy picture, so I'll shut up now. Anyway, my client Partha and I dutifully went around to the other side of the rock formation and, sure enough, there was a lizard hanging out in a little crevice. The situation was nearly impossible, photography wise. It was very bright outside and very, very dark in the crevice, too dark for my autofocus to work. This is not an optimal situation for getting a macro picture of a tiny lizard. But I didn't have any polite way to avoid it since the guy was standing right there, insisting, so I just snapped off a couple to make him happy. (Also, I'm not sure that the lizard appreciated my lens being five inches from his face -- he doesn't look too happy about it. Ha.) At any rate, to my surprise, one of the quick snaps was actually in focus and the lizard is sharp as a tack. I did have to fiddle with the picture quite a bit in Photoshop to make it look decent and bring out the detail, but I was surprised at how well it came out, all things considered. So here you have it, people: Mr. Lizard Lips, captured under duress when I was just trying to take some senior portraits. Not bad!