Frogs, Frogs, & More Frogs

Red-Eyed Tree Frog walking along branch- captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberley F-2 Flash Bracket

I often receive kind words from the folks that follow my Instagram feed (@mclachlanwild), Facebook page, and here on the blog regarding my frog photography. It is these kind words that keep me inspired to keep creating and trying out new ideas with my frog imagery. About a week and a half ago I booked a controlled photo shoot with various, captive, tropical frog species.  This photo shoot was planned for two main reasons with the first being to add some very cool frogs to my image library, and secondly to see if such a set-up could work for frog photography workshops. I am pleased to announce that I will indeed be organizing frog workshops, under controlled conditions, with several captive frog species. Please do stay tuned as I will announce the details soon. This blog post is just a taste of the kind of imagery that will be created during the workshops. I created no less than 500 images during the session and still have numerous images to optimize. While I do enjoy wading through wetlands and laying in the muck to capture the various frogs of the Great Lakes Region, it is a nice change of pace to create imagery of these beautiful tropical frogs species under controlled conditions whereby you will stay clean, warm, and dry 🙂 Please feel free to shoot me an email at info@andrewmclachlan.ca if you are interested in this upcoming workshop and I will be sure to add you to the contact list.

The frogs species that I photograph during this controlled shoot were:

• Red-Eyed Tree Frog – endemic to Costa Rica
• Budgett’s Frog (also known as Paraguay Horned Frog) – South America
• White’s Tree Frog – endemic to Australia
• Vietnamese Moss Frog – endemic to Vietnam
• Tomato Frog – endemic to Madagascar

My favorite frogs to photograph during this controlled shoot were the highly aquatic Budgett’s Frog, which is a voracious predator quite capable of devouring prey as large as mice, and secondly the Vietnamese Moss Frog. Moss Frogs have amazing coloration and skin textures, which allow them to blend into their native habitat along river banks in Vietnam.

Here is a selection of the various species that were photographed during this session. Each of these species will most likely be featured in the first workshop. Also note that each of these images was created using a handheld rig with a small Nikon SB400 Speedlight (now discontinued) on a Wimberely F-2 Macro Bracket

Please do remember to click on each of the images to view the sharper, larger version 🙂

Budgett’s Frog – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberley F-2 Macro Bracket

 

Vietnamese Moss Frog – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberely F-2 Macro Bracket

 

White’s Tree Frog – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberley F-2 Macro Bracket

 

Tomato Frog – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberley F-2 Macro Bracket

 

Budgett’s Frog on land – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Macro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberley F-2 Macro Bracket

 

Vietnamese Moss Frog – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberely Macro Bracket

 

Vietnamese Moss Frog abstract – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberely F-2 Macro Bracket

 

White’s Tree Frog – captive
Nikon D800, Nikon 105mm Micro Lens
ISO 100, f22 @ 1/60 sec
Nikon SB400 Speedlight on a Wimberely F-2 Macro Bracket

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The Winter Landscape at Tiny Marsh Provincial Wildlife Area

Tiny Marsh in Winter
Nikon D800, Nikon 200-500mm lens @ 200mm
ISO 400, f22 @ 0.4 sec.

 

I awoke at 5:00 a.m. this morning to make the drive to Tiny Marsh in Elmvale, Ontario for what I hoped would be some nice winter sunrise scenes over the frozen wetland. As it turned out the cloud cover persisted and eliminated any chance of a sunrise, however, as often happens at Tiny Marsh, there is frequently interesting wind-swept patterns of snow and ice over the frozen marshland. The temperatures were a balmy -3 degrees Celsius and the winds were relatively light – it was a good morning to be at the marsh. In south-central Ontario we have been experiencing unusually warm weather and have just started to get some colder weather settling in to freeze the lakes, rivers, and wetlands. I spent several hours exploring the frozen patterns along the edges of the marshland and located one Snowy Owl but it was too far out across the unstable, newly forming ice to risk approaching it for photos. In fact, for many of the images I created this morning I received no less than half a dozen soakers when I stepped too far off the edge of the shoreline for a better perspective and sank through the ice up to my calfs. By the time I was ready to leave my boots were full of ice cold water and my toes were a tad chilly…hopefully the images were worth the effort 🙂

Please remember to click on each image to view the sharper, larger versions.

 

Pre-dawn Light Over Tiny Marsh
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 18mm
ISO 100, f16 @ 20 seconds

 

Winter Details at Tiny Marsh
Nikon D800, Nikon 200-500mm lens @ 480mm
ISO 100, f16 @ 1 second

 

Winter at Tiny Marsh
Nikon D800, Nikon 24-85mm lens @ 68mm
ISO 100, f16 @ 0.3 sec

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