Puerto Los Cabos, San José del Cabo, Mexico
Eye Level With a Lizard
At Puerto Los Cabos, a green iguana on the ground, head down among seedlings, photographed from its own height.
The best way to photograph a small animal is to get down to its level. For this iguana, that meant bringing the camera down close to the gravel.
The iguana is on the right side of the frame, low to the ground, its head lowered toward a small green seedling. Its body is bright, saturated green, every scale visible: the fine pebbled texture on its head, the larger round scale below its ear, the crest of spines running along its neck and back. Its eye is a deep red-brown, half closed, watchful. One front leg is planted forward on the gravel, toes spread. The tail curves away behind it, out of focus, into the dark green of the background.
The ground is coarse gravel and sand, warm tan with flecks of grey and white, scattered with twigs and small sprouting plants. On the left side of the frame, a weathered log lies along the edge, its pale grey bark cracked and peeling, filling almost a third of the picture. In the background, everything fades into soft greens and browns.
Being down on the ground changes the picture. From standing height, you'd be looking down on the iguana's back, and it would be a small green shape on brown gravel. From its own level, you see its face. The log becomes a wall, the seedlings become trees, and the iguana becomes something closer to a portrait subject.
I like the composition's balance: the pale, textured log on the left, the bright green iguana on the right, the seedling in between where the iguana's attention is. Your eye goes from the log, along the gravel, to the iguana's head, and then to the small green leaf it's examining.
Iguanas spend much of their time doing exactly this: moving slowly, investigating, nibbling at plants. It's not dramatic behaviour, but it's real, and I wanted to show it rather than a posed-looking moment.
From the bag
Sony A7R III · Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II · 151mm · 1/2500s · f/2.8 · ISO 100
At 151mm, I could stay far enough back not to disturb the iguana while still filling the frame. f/2.8 gives very shallow depth of field at that distance, so the head is sharp while the tail and the background fall away into soft green. The log in the near foreground also softens slightly, which helps it frame rather than compete. Bright sun at ISO 100 gave 1/2500s, more than fast enough to freeze any sudden movement.