Its been a while

Though it's been a while since the last post on here I have been busy with photographs. I've been editing about 150 images that are about to appear in a revision of Alan Mark's classic "alpine plants of NZ". I've also been fitting in a bit of plant photography that I plan to use in some plant books of my own. During a walk yesterday looking for NZ plants that I haven't photographed yet I was lucky enough to encounter this little guy - an Archey's frog (Leiopelma archeyi). I say lucky because this species has been hit hard by a fungus that is also decimating other frog populations around the globe. Archeys frog is now classified as Critically Endangered and noone really knows how many are left in the Coromandel Ranges and in Whareorino Forest - the only locations where they have ever been found. I'm particularly saddened about the decline in Archeys frog as I did some monitoring work on this species before the fungus invaded - back in 1998. Back then I found lots of Archeys frogs, some as small as the fingernail on your little finger. Now that we live in the Coromandel I've been keeping an eye open for these guys in all their usual haunts, but with no luck. Until yesterday

Anyway, a reintroduction to an old friend ....

Archeys frog, Coromandel Peninsula

About the photo: frogs are really difficult to photograph due to light reflecting off their moist skin. They're even more difficult to photograph when they're only the size of your top thumb joint and you're working alone! To photograph this frog I found a nice mossy boulder and arranged a fern leaf to add some depth to the background. Next on a tripod above and to camera left I balanced a flash with a diffuser to act as main light. A series of practice shots were used to set the light output from this main flash. Photo taken one handed with a 100mm macro lens on manual focus and f16 at 125th/sec and ISO 100. A ring-flash was hand-held low and to camera right to fill in the shadow on the side of the frog.