Lizard on a wall

[Bo_]

I took it on the wall of my house - I was a bit afraid it would run away - so I kept my distance. The photo is tilted 90 degrees (it is hanging on the wall).

ISO: 400 1/250 s. F7.1 at 55mm with my Canon EOS 60D and off camera flash. Handheld.

Your opinion:
Should I have kept it "standing up" - or is okay as landscape.
The crop - it it to wide?

Fra Nature_Houston

[Dodge]

I never realized you had such cool lizards in Denmark.

My initial reaction when I read that you had rotated the pic was that I'd prefer to see it untilted, that was even before I read your questions. I think the crop is fine though.

You could try with him going both up and down the wall also, to see which looks best. I'm sat here twisting my head round, but it's hard to see really. Gonna stop before I hurt myself

[mrteacherdude]

Cool lizard! I'm a lizard guy so naturally gravitate toward them, and pictures of them

I personally prefer to see photos of an animal [especially a lizard ] in its orientation when the photo was taken, it generally looks more natural and conveys information about the habits of the animal. I looked at your lizard with it's head pointed downward and it does look more natural to me that way because of the balance on its feet and the positioning of legs and head.

However, it looks a little odd as well (facing down) as I think my eye is looking for some sort of visual clue outside of the lizard to really help me understand that it is facing downward. In a case like this I might have a tendency to sacrifice some of the closeup characteristics and crop a little "looser" to include some contextual clues around the lizard. Alternatively, cropping a little tighter to the dorsal side of the lizard would take the lizard out of the center and provide more apparent space underneath it which may improve the composition and allow the photo to stand without the contextual clues around it; that is, in the head-down orientation cropping closer the right side, leaving more apparent space on the left. I think that would work as well in the landscape orientation that you have posted; essentially "uncentering" the lizard and removing some of the darker and unfocused wall to its right. If you have the room in your original, you might also try cropping to leave a little more of its tail in the photo. Something looks a little unbalanced to me, either the lack of more of the tail, or the hind foot being too close to the edge of the frame - not sure.

While I was writing the above, I did "play" with your photo a little (hope you don't mind) and simply cropped a little tighter to the right of the lizard (in head down orientation) and it seemed to look better to me even without more of the tail.

I know this is not what you were asking for in your original post, but how are the colors in the photo? Are they representative of the scene? To me things look a little "brown," dulling the colors of the wall and the lizard, like the white balance is not quite correct for the scene.

Everyone should take more lizard pictures

[Bo_]

Hi Dodge - I forgot to change my location - I've moved to Houston, TX - here the Lizards are more common than in DK and the lizard was heading up (with its head).

@mrteacherdude: I tried not to get the surroundings in the picture (it was my sons bike:-) But that would have helped on the orientation issue..

On the whitebalance - I just took it strait from the camera. The wall is a bit brownish..

Thanx for the comments!

[mrteacherdude]

Funny - I just assumed he was facing downward (not sure why); I guess I should have read your original post a little more closely. I looked at the photo again with him facing upward and it makes even more sense that way as I can see how his toe pads are gripping the ridges on the wall. Personally, I like it that way more than the other two possible orientations. It also makes more sense to me that you are located in Texas to catch a photo of this guy - I was scratching my head about this lizard being in Denmark and was just about ready to start researching lizards there.

Interestingly, I find the composition/crop pleasing in that orientation and not sure why I feel like it needs to be cropped if he was facing down-wall, maybe the angle doesn't seem quite right for that direction. For some reason I'm also not looking for external references to help me understand his orientation better when he is facing upward.

The reason why I asked about the colors is because I'm assuming you took this at night since you used a flash and there appears to be some noise toward the tail end of the lizard even though your ISO wasn't really that high. I frequently have to adjust the white balance and levels when I'm shooting stuff on walls around my porch light at night, otherwise things have a tendency to look dull and browner than it really is.