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Friday, January 16, 2009

Bamboo Viper

This was my first photographic encounter with a venomous snake ever. The ones I met since I bought my DSLR last March were either roadkill, or I didn’t have my camera with me.

But during my walk through the woods last night, I finally met a very nice and beautiful venomous snake I could actually photograph – and my absolute favorite species among the 53 on the island. Not only was this the first time I’ve seen a live Taiwan Bamboo Viper (Trimeresurus stejnegeri stejnegeri), but it was also a juvenile (about six inches), and thus the perfect training partner for photographing any venomous serpents I hopefully will meet later in life: as long as I kept a six-inch distance, I didn’t have to worry about how to explain to the nice 911 lady how to get the ambulance to that remote spot in the boonies where the encounter took place. Also, it was a pretty chilly night (ca. 57 degrees F), so the viper was too sluggish to run off, but not too inert to change positions all the time. In short, the perfect model!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great Photos Twoton! Nice colored snake there! Me? I would want to use a 180mm lens to take a photo of a snake like that, would want to be at least 6 feet away not 6 inches :)

Great work!

Twoton said...

Thanks for the laurels, Arvin! Since the beast was only six inches long, I thought I stayed well within the "one snake length" distance rule :-)

Nioki said...

Wow, these photos are brilliant, and the snake is just beautiful. They really are fascinating creatures.

Anonymous said...

Nice pictures!
I am a student in Taipei and I'd like to shot photos of wild animals,too! Particularly in amphibian and reptile.

Sorry for my poor English,
here's my blog:
http://chungweiyou.pixnet.net/blog
Although I was written by Chinese,but I guess that it wouldn't be a gap to understand the beauty of nature and wild animals,isn't it ?

cfimages said...

Some very good photos of the viper. Well done.