Snapping Turtle Portrait Options

Hatchlings!

Last Tuesday, a few turtles were born.  Here are some of the photos from then.  The oldest of the photographed turtles was only 24 hours old.

As seen in the photo below, turtles are born with an egg tooth, which is a small hard projection on their upper jaw.  This helps them tear the egg while they are hatching.

The 'Real' Splashes

Some turtles are clumsy divers. Others are, well... clumsier. Eventually we've gotten a turtle to dive nicely.

Here's a video showing an assortment of turtle dives. It's been slowed down to half the speed. Due to choppy footage, I may record this over again with a faster fps rate. Then their movements could be broken down into more precise steps and clearer frames.

From Photos to Video

To get a breakdown of what actually happens when a turtle dives, Dr Rimkus asked me to start with video first. I went ahead and filmed dozens of turtle dives. With this footage, we will be able to break the video down into frames and look at specific points in diving or swimming. Once we know what exactly goes on, we will be attempting to capture a similar frame, but with an actual photograph.

I've gone ahead and converted the HD video files (.m2ts) to a standard HD format. (HD .wmv). With .wmv, we will be able to slo-mo the playback and analyze our next steps better.

For followers I also went ahead and filmed around lab so you get a general idea of how the setup is carried about.

Pablo has impressed me thus far. I look forward to working on this project and where it may lead us!

Day One

Dr Rimkus has asked me to work on turtle photography for him. He'd shared a few ideas with me over the last few weeks of school, and the school got a ton of new photography equipment.

So now my job was to capture a diving turtle with the new Nikon D300S, and several speedlights. The speedlights hadn't come in yet so we used only one, but tried out the brand new Nikon lenses.

Earlier today I spent time in one of our school labs. Only this time it was going to be for very different reasons. Today in lab I was going to take pictures.

I'd also brought my own tripods, cameras, cables, batteries, speedlight, lenses, etc...

We spent over three hours in the lab with the turtles.  No pictures turned out considerably great, but it was only the first day, getting used to the (awesome) new equipment.  This is what we turned up from day one:

Focus and timing were the biggest challenges.  (None of these pictures are truly in good enough focus.)  The third biggest challenge was the lighting.  But after today I know what I'll do differently.  I'm going back to the lab this Wednesday, where hopefully I'll be able to correct those errors.