My friend the skink in the cemetery

Robert Evagelista wrote:

Hen3ry wrote:

While waiting for the cruise ship to arrive this morning, I stood in the shade of a tree at the front of the cemetery I had chosen to take my pix from today (cemeteries here are on hilltops and some provide the best view around).

After 10 minutes of stillness, I noticed that the resident skinks were coming out. So having the 100-300 fitted to the GX7, I naturally volunteered to do some free protraits of them.

Pretty twitchy little fellows, skinks, but I got a couple of good shots, with fill-in flash from the pop-up flash to even out the harsh shadows of the very directional lighting only 15 minutes or so after sunrise.

These are OOC JPEGS except for a little cropping of both shots, maybe taking 10% off the frame, and reducing size for posting.

It is so tough to nail the focus on this one.
Such Small eyes and and I know they move a lot and move fast.
Plus they are perfectly camouflaged.

so how did you do it.

I was standing very still and this one and a couple of others came out. I took a few shots, not so good, then very slowly moved around to the other side of the tree I was standing under for shade. The skink DOES move fast but he was pretty confident about me, I think, which is rare, because the kids will chase them to their deaths at the drop of a hat.

Anyway, I slowly lowered myself and the camera, with the LCD tilted up, to get a low POV, waited for the AF to tell me it had locked on, and took several shots with the bult-in flash working. To my amazement, the little fellow didn't move. BUT he did move his head a couple of times. This shot as the only really successful one, but I am very pleased with it.