In 1991, I had moved to North Carolina exactly one year before, which I can say easily because both this event and the move occurred on my birthday. I had, after a false start working for an idiotic local printer, begun working for the local humane society, which ran the animal shelter (see here for a related story.) Among many other services, the shelter performed emergency animal rescue work in the off hours, nights and weekends, which is where I actually started. I’m not sure what made me acquiesce to working on my birthday, but this was just one of several events which made me resolve never to do this again. It took a few more years to solidify this resolve, though.

At that time, I was working a full-time shift at the shelter and then going “on call” for rescue work, usually one night a week. We had the whole schmeer: a fully-equipped van, pager, and mobile phone – “mobile” meaning, in 1991, almost a carryon bag by today’s definitions, roughly seven pounds and stored in a case with shoulder strap. Virtually any animal call was our responsibility, within the entire county, so some nights were fairly busy. This particular evening, I had received a call about an injured raccoon on campus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, quite close to where I lived, and I headed out in the early evening downpour to see what the situation was.

The raccoon had decided to seek shelter in a tree, and I was directed to the right one by the caller, otherwise I would likely never have spotted it. I was unable to see how mobile the critter was, and thus gauge the extent of any injuries, so I gathered a likely collection of equipment and started climbing the tree – luckily, it was a longneedle pine of the type so prevalent around here, with plenty of branches to assist the ascent. But this was perhaps the easiest part of this task.

Raccoons, to fill in the uninitiated, are actually fairly dangerous wildlife to handle, close to the top of the list for species around here. They’re aggressive when threatened, afraid of very little, and pack a lot of agility and a mouthful of sharp teeth. Even the heavy leather welder’s gloves we used for animal handling were insufficient to protect one’s hands from a determined bite. Usually, we used a net to capture animals like this, deep and broad like the landing net that fishermen use, but heavier material. Climbing a tree, however, meant that this would only be in the way, and I’d unlikely get a decent sweep anyway. So I was heading up with only a set of gloves and a small cat carrier strapped to my belt. I was realistic enough not to imagine this was sufficient equipment for the task, but what was I going to do? The idea was to either quickly scruff the raccoon, grasping it by the loose skin on the back of the neck where it (probably) could not reach me, and bundle it into the carrier; or, if it was close to incapacitated, coax it backwards into the carrier itself. Neither one of these filled me with confidence.

It was still raining, and the sun had set so twilight was fading fast. I wear glasses, so it was only a minute before I was looking through a combination of distorting water droplets and fog – I’m far too nearsighted to remove the glasses and have a better go without them. It was still warm, which helped, but this doesn’t mean much when the water is running down your back and into your pants. I got close enough to the raccoon to see that it was only limping, able to scoot easily away from me in the tree, and not happy with my approach – trying to get it would have been next to impossible, very dangerous, and probably unwarranted from the nature of its injuries. Wildlife medical care is a little tricky, because you have to balance the help you can provide with the mental state of the animal while you provide this care. Virtually no animal is going to benefit from bandages – they’ll be torn off in minutes. While handling it, and during a captive convalescence, the animal is going to be highly stressed from proximity to people, which isn’t a good thing to induce. And maintaining a full round of even antibiotics would mean ten days of captivity, during which it may not even want to eat, which will not help matters any. With an animal displaying no open wounds, no bleeding, and merely a limp, it can actually do more harm trying to treat this than simply leaving it be. And that was my decision.

When I looked down to begin descending, however, I got the chance to reflect on choices a little more. I was already using my birthday evening to climb trees in the rain, and now I found I couldn’t see well enough in the fading light to spot the branches which I’d need to get down. The descent was a mixture of shaking my head madly to try and clear the glasses a little, and swinging my legs while letting myself down gingerly, until I chanced upon a foothold. Getting down took twice as long as climbing up, but I made it without having to spend the night. I was soaked, scratched from branches, and long overdue for dinner, much less any celebration. Doing animal rescue usually means a certain mindset, ignoring personal comfort and convenience in favor of helping animals in need, but this doesn’t mean you won’t look back and wonder what the hell you were thinking at that time.

It’s also a little disturbing that this was nineteen years ago. A lot has happened since then, but I’m betting I can still find that tree on campus.

Yes, the midwestern states present some prime opportunities to get lightning photographs, due to their weather patterns and the relative flatness of the land, allowing for good views of approaching and receding storms. I expect, before too long, I’ll get to see (and mutter with jealousy over) some shots he’s gotten among some really sharp scenery or foreground interest. Lightning shots are great, but like everything, they work best if they’re situated among something else in the image that draws attention, creates a mood, or provides contrast. Many times, in order to achieve this, you need to provide some help – the storm itself will keep the skies too dark to provide any illumination of a foreground, so unless your complementary subject works well in silhouette, you need to provide some other light, or get your timing really bang on to catch the fading twilight at sunset to light up your frame, but not too much – remember, lightning usually takes long exposures while you wait for unpredictable bolts. An ideal balance is catching light immediately before sunset, peering in under the level of the storm clouds to throw some light on the ground, while the sky in your frame is darkened by the clouds themselves. Tricky, in many cases, since most storms in the US come from the west where your sunset would be. Such goes the planning of nature photography.

As an unrelated note, I’m about to upgrade my Atahualpa blog theme to see if it fixes some little quirks. This might mean the blog gets really funky looking at some point, or acts weird. Be patient, it’ll get back to normal shortly. I’ve been pleased with the theme, since it offers tons of options with a simple user interface, but there have been some glitchy issues recently that I’m hoping this corrects.

I took second in Round One, and you’ll notice I never mentioned it at all here. That’ll show me.

Be nice and fair, vote only once – and vote for, seriously, whichever you think is best. Part of being a photographer is seeing how your images honestly stack up against others. Cheers!

The only content in Phil’s final post on the subject deals with the aftermath of his talk, and he tells of three immediate cases where he was congratulated, immediately after his talk, by sobbing and tearful people in the skeptical “community” (hate that phrase) that had been longing to hear that from someone for a long time. They had apparently been ostracized and insulted by others for their religious standpoints. As Phil pointed out, these people were active advocates for critical-thinking, who were being marginalized for their beliefs – one active christian, one “deist” (Phil’s quotes, not mine,) one unknown. He also related how he’d heard from “hundreds” of similar situations.

Now, I’ve been spending my time with other, more meaningful pursuits recently, and did not read through the 300+ comments following this post, nor the reaction from the various other blogs that Phil listed in Part Two. So I haven’t actually seen how many others tumbled to the discrepancy here, or Phil’s reaction to them. This comes only from the posts he’s made directly, and my reaction to them. But this post still failed to show what it was I, and several others, have repeatedly asked for: evidence that this is an issue.

You see, people coming up to Phil and complaining about their treatment, or thanking him for his attack on said treatments, isn’t actually showing us the examples of the treatments that, to judge from a half-hour lecture in the most prominent skeptical seminar that exists, must be rampant. This is, instead, something that is called “anecdotal evidence,” a factor in fuzzy thinking that many skeptics actually rail against. Personal experience does not carry any more weight than one data point, if that – this is provided that the experience has not been clouded by any inability to evaluate data effectively in the first place. If we are going to deny this as useful when coming from someone we’re trying to reach, correct, or enlighten, we can’t abandon this when it comes from someone we agree with, or we’re being hypocrites.

The second part is a bit more involved. There is no real definition of “skeptic,” so there are no particular guidelines to what makes a proper one. But I’m glad I mentioned “cognitive dissonance” in the previous post on this subject, because it suddenly becomes a key phrase here. Cognitive dissonance is something that plays a huge part in skepticism, as well as in evaluating people’s convictions and belief systems. Basically, it refers to something that has become exempt from someone’s typical criteria for rational thought [EDIT: See comments below]. Police officers who are drug addicts. Politicians that find upholding the Constitution is “traitorous.” That kind of thing. It’s actually something that can be very hard to deal with, because most people who display this either haven’t recognized it for what it is, or have rationalized it in some way. To anyone promoting critical-thinking, it’s one of the major roadblocks – maybe even the biggest.

Being a skeptic and being an atheist or agnostic do not directly relate, but they do often go hand-in-hand, and a very large percentage (I don’t think it’s possible to get good numbers) are both. This stands to reason: religion is the most prominent example of fuzzy, uncritical thinking that exists, by a wide margin. Without any evidence behind it, with such varied practices and beliefs, and with its driving force of “faith,” defined as conviction without proof, it’s really hard to argue against it leading the pack.

So, can you be a skeptic and religious at the same time? Well, that’s going to depend on your definition of skeptic, really, but if it includes doing away with cognitive dissonance, then no, you cannot. I have actually seen such discussions taking place on forums, but again, no serious attacks. I’m quick to say that this doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but then again, I trashed this bad argument previously, didn’t I? We’re still at the “show me the money” stage, and can’t seem to get past it. But at this point, if someone says they haven’t been accepted among skeptics because of their religious views, now I’m starting to understand what might be taking place.

I still haven’t gotten to Phil’s viewpoint on it, though, and unless he does a much better job, I cannot. Personally, I’m not concerned with someone’s religion – they can do as they please, believe what they want. The sticking point becomes when they feel their personal standpoint has to apply to anyone else, and that’s what I, and a majority of skeptics, actually address. At the same time, I don’t feel this is supposed to apply to everyone, and others have their own personal approaches. It can certainly be argued that religion is one of the biggest issues in defeating critical-thinking that exists – if you make it acceptable to refer to ephemeral beings or vague otherworldly influences, you are defeating the entire idea of skepticism, of dealing with the here-and-now, testable, provable world. A religious skeptic is quite a bit like a vegetarian that eats beef – I think you’re going to find a lot of people that deny you’re a vegetarian. And if you’re trying to convince other people to examine themselves critically – if you’re actively advocating skepticism – then you’re actually in a damaging position when you cannot show that you yourself have overcome certain hurdles. Again, we’re dancing with the concept of hypocrisy.

So, I wonder, what exactly is the nature of these attacks that Phil’s acquaintances have gone through? Because now I have some idea what might be happening, but unless Phil actually comes forward with some real evidence, some data instead of stories, I can’t do more than speculate. There are other speculations that have come to mind that I have purposefully not included here, because there is not enough to proceed with – but they still may be a factor. However, Phils’ reluctance to support his viewpoint with empirical data has been seen many times before, and in fact, I have dealt with it personally countless times. It’s actually a pretty common tactic of the fuzzy-thinkers. Which is making this too hypocritical to deal with anymore. I’ve gone past being a little annoyed at this point, I’m now disgusted. This is exactly what we fight not to do.

I was going to say that there’s one more thing that defeats Phil’s argument, but I stopped myself, because it’s not correct – Phil’s argument hasn’t really been defeated, but I’ll deal with that one paragraph down. Change this to, there’s one more thing that doesn’t fit with Phil’s intentions. He asked, what are we trying to do, as skeptics and critical-thinkers? And answered that: we’re trying to convince people. But he said nothing whatsoever about how he changed any of those people who came up to thank him. If anything, he made a point of not changing them, but accepting them and their standpoint. Someone could argue that perhaps he’s in a better position to approach this now, but that’s still a specious argument, if he’s not actually tackling that task. I noticed a long time ago that Phil rarely ever addresses religion, and specifically has begged off on even answering what his personal viewpoint is. That’s fine, really, and his choice – but this starts to look like Phil thinks his choice should be everyone else’s, and that’s not something I’m going to support in the least. That’s what I actually argue against.

Returning to the “Phil’s argument” point above, I have to say I’m not in disagreement with it – “don’t be a dick” isn’t exactly bad advice, and if you’re actually interested in affecting people for the better, your approach matters a lot. I still maintain that it needs to be tempered to the audience and the situation, so I can also say that “don’t be a wuss” is also good advice. But these are also my personal opinions, and not something I’m going to lecture anyone about. Do you hear me, Phil? Stop telling other people what to do!

(Yes, that was intentional irony – did you catch it?)

On the lighter side, and because I can compartmentalize my opinions on specific traits of someone without them overtaking my entire viewpoint, Phil actually has a show coming up on the Discovery Channel, called, “Bad Universe,” and it now has an air date: Sunday, August 29 at 10:00 PM (check your local listings to confirm.) This is Phil’s strong point, and a topic he knows very well, plus he’s a compelling speaker, so this should prove to be good. Check it out!

I scanned it from slide some months back because I liked it, then decided it wasn’t working for my marketing materials and never did anything with it. From time to time since, I come across it in my scanned slide folder and immediately say, “Oh I like that,” – and then start to wonder why.

So, here it is, in all its glory or lack thereof. It is, by the way, a tight selection of some ripples at the base of Crabtree Falls in the mountains of North Carolina. The falls themselves are nice and scenic, pretty good as small falls go, and I have plenty of images framed differently that work just fine. Maybe my mistake is in knowing what else I have and how this one compares. If I had commenters, I’d invite them to chime in…

This also serves the purpose of making a break between windy opinionated posts, which means you know what’s coming up next…

It’s actually a fairly long talk, especially since his primary point is right there in the title, but he takes a moment in the related post (well after the talk was given) to clarify some things, such as what “dick” actually means. He’s okay with satire, with being angry, with activism, with not backing down. This was good to know, because the talk dealt with very few specifics, and in the places where such an example would be called for, he begged off on naming any culprits or situations, saying that everyone present likely had their own experiences.

The problem was, and still remains, how “dick” is defined, and what he actually meant by his plea for effective discourse. I have plenty of experiences, running the gamut from honest questions from people who recognized that their information might be flawed, through arrogant proclaimers and outright trolls, to people who I honestly feel were mentally unhinged. And my response to all of them is different. The arrogant and the self-righteous often get a sarcastic or sharp response, and I talked about why in an earlier post. Trolls usually get ignored. Honest, respectful questions, however, get respectful answers, as do the mentally unstable, though in the latter case I often won’t engage since I feel unqualified to handle potentially explosive situations. And for the most part, this is what I see not only from most other bloggers, but from the greatest majority of commenters as well. Actual incivility, which seems to be what Phil was talking about, tends to be pretty rare.

In fact, when I look at much of our culture’s social interaction, I have to say that skeptical/critical thinking forums are among the most mild and benign that I’ve seen, especially when you consider the highly controversial nature of the topics discussed. I’ve watched, more than occasionally, some serious incivility and pejorative comments come up on online comic strip forums, of all places, mostly when some comic can either be construed or even twisted to have a political message. Scientific American routinely gets blasted with creationist screeds, even when the article only vaguely deals with evolution. This says nothing at all about actual political forums, and even the comments on Cracked.com articles.

Listening to Phil, one gets the impression that skeptics have a tendency to be abrasive, certainly more so than the average joe. But I’m fairly active in several forums, and while I’ve even addressed nasty comments myself, I can’t honestly say that it’s rampant, or even mildly prevalent. What really destroyed the advice, however, were the two examples that Phil gave. The first, in opening the talk, was in asking how many skeptical thinkers had been converted by people shouting in their face and calling them names. He actually did get some positive responses from this, but what struck so many people was how badly this argument applies to anyone’s experience. Very, very few people can ever be seen acting this way, so why address the greater skeptical community, if you’ll pardon that phrase (I’ve never considered it a community, simply a standpoint,) with this example? It has been, rightfully, called a straw man, an unrealistic situation created just to be able to knock it back down with easy arguments.

Phil compounded this with the example he closed his talk with, that of being confronted by a nine-year-old Young Earth Creationist. He pointed out how well he did by not calling her names, impressing, well, only those who think that skeptics are unthinking ogres I guess. For those of us who decided to pursue advocacy for critical thinking, the ugliest thing we deal with is typically arrogant ignorance, something that is hardly going to be demonstrated by a nine-year-old girl – anyone with four brains cells to rub together knows she’s simply parroting her parent’s beliefs. Attacking her, even on the basis of her arguments, would be pointless and cruel, and only an idiot would pursue such a strategy. It doesn’t say much for Phil’s trust in his fellow skeptics that he would think we need such admonishment, or that we would be “dicks” in this situation without his help.

For this, however, he’s gotten a lot of support in his comments. Some are, I’m sure, from general sycophants and people who value non-confrontational discourse – any popular blog gets them, even Pharyngula. What strikes me as curious is how many commenters on critical-thinking blogs seem to lose their skeptical abilities when it comes to someone they “side” with. Critical-thinking isn’t really something that should get relaxed, and no one is safe from irrationality. It appears to be a case of something called, “cognitive dissonance,” the trait of (usually) subconsciously avoiding the application of rational criteria evenly throughout one’s thought processes. One of the best examples of this is doctors who smoke.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with what goes on in active forums for atheists and skeptics, let me give you some perspective. Most of the skeptical participants are quite familiar with a large variety of common fallacies and logical failures, so much so that there’s a list of the most common ones: argument from authority, false dichotomy, slippery slope, ad absurdium, tautology, and so on. Mixed among the skeptical participants will be a certain number of people with bold assertions contrary to the skeptical standpoint: Young Earth Creationists, Alt-Med supporters, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and suchlike. Their apparent purpose in many cases is to openly denigrate the skeptical standpoint, and this isn’t very often taking place in reasonable discourse, polite terms, or without calling names. Another group you can see quite often are the trolls, who fit into the above group but only participate to post either highly sarcastic or intentionally fabricated comments. A very small number are the crackpots, people who appear to have little grip on reality. And then you have, maybe getting as high as three percent of the participants in any given forum, those who do not hold a skeptical standpoint but will engage in meaningful discourse on a topic without resorting to childish behavior.

Now, to provide a couple of examples. It is still possible to hear, within any discussion dealing with evolution, the triumphant cry of, “If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” This was a nonsense argument three days after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and debunked as a fallacious standpoint then, and every day since, but the ignorance continues because anti-evolutionists still keep repeating it to their flock. On UFO forums, believers will routinely bring up “swamp gas” as if they have heard any skeptic, anywhere, ever mention it, much less provide it as a common explanation (I have never heard this in my life, and I’ve been very active in that field.) UFO enthusiasts, Alt-Med proponents, and anti-vaxxers routinely proclaim government intervention and suppression, despite the fact that it’s both ludicrous and unsupported by evidence. And throughout any such forum, you can hear logical fallacies, of the type I mentioned above, all day long.

Now, there is no such thing as addressing these issues once and for all. They have all been addressed, and thousands more besides, every day for decades. It actually gets very tedious to keep hearing them, and most especially in an arrogant, self-righteous, or smug way, and this is quite common on skeptical forums. Some of the posts I’ve made here are tagged as “Reference” because they’re so common, and I want to find what I typed and link to it, rather than repeating it yet again. But hopefully, I’ve given you the idea that pursuing skeptical and critical-thinking advocacy is fraught with childish repetition and frustrations.

I point all this out to make it clear that I certainly expect people to be human, and everyone to have their own personality. But in the face of such a thankless pursuit, skeptics have actually been behaving in an exemplary manner for the most part, and deserve more respect and recognition from Phil than they have actually received in his talk.

You know, I would love to participate in a forum with a “Don’t be a dick” rule, as long as it applied to everyone, regardless. Funny, I somehow fail to ever see that, and the biggest dicks have never been the skeptics. Phil’s talk smacks a bit too much of the accommodationist standpoint, one that maintains that atheists, skeptics, and critical-thinkers can never be uncivil, regardless of what they face, but this only applies to that side – the various other groups named above are free to engage in whatever behavior they like, and need to be “respected” for this because it’s part of their “beliefs.”

The idea that Phil is playing an accommodationist game isn’t as farfetched as it might sound at first. Phil has openly admitted to being friends with Chris Mooney, the most prominent of those espousing this highly biased approach, and in the comments actually gives support for accommodationism, though he, rather interestingly, defines it differently than any accommodationist I’ve ever seen, Mooney included. There’s another fallacy that’s common, called the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, which requires the guilty party to absolve themselves of the blame or failures associated with their particular standpoint by denying that a “true” holder of this standpoint behaves this way.

It’s very disappointing to be seeing this from someone who is so prominently promoting critical-thinking, and I’d like to believe it’s a fluke, a momentary lapse. So far, however, he has been supporting his stand without responding to its flaws. We’ll see what happens in parts two and three, but I’m viewing this all rather skeptically now. I may be back with some further examinations of this folderol.

[Edit - before I reviewed this lengthy rant to post it, Phil produced Part Two, which did nothing to alleviate any concerns or address any issues I've mentioned here - in fact, his targeting of Matt Dillahunty's take on things at Atheist Experience actually exacerbated the situation. However, there are apparently more commenters seeing the issue with less than agreement now.]

Spider webbing usually takes lens cleaning fluid to get off (I know this because I have had jumping spiders leap onto the lens to run around,) but I lucked out this time. The rim of the lens actually suspended the web across it, so it never touched the glass, but I went ahead and cleaned it anyway.

There’s too damn many spiders around my place…

The first is, I created a webpage about understanding the aperture within your camera – what it is, how it works, what it does for your photos, and so on. Lavishly illustrated and a nonstop rollercoaster ride from start to finish, it can be found at http://wading-in.net/aperture.html.

The second is, I’m selling one of my cameras, a Mamiya 645E, so if you’re interested, especially if you’re interested in starting in medium format, check out http://wading-in.net/Add/mamiya.html. If that page is down, it means the camera has been sold.

I’ll be back shortly with more real content!

So how am I showing you this one? Because I had resized some samples to e-mail to people, and that’s what you’re seeing here, only marginally smaller for this blog than the only copy I now have. And that size is way too small to market to publishers, and too small to get any more detail from.

This is why you perform routine, and multiple, backups of digital images, and why you don’t do what I did and spend any amount of time, even the brief juggling I was in the middle of (which would have lasted no more than a few days) with only one copy. Media fails, and in my history, all media fails, sometimes much quicker than it should. The CDs I made of my first film scans are mostly unreadable now, even though they saw very little usage and were always stored in jewel cases. The slides that I’d actually scanned are still in good shape, and can be scanned again as needed, but eventually they’ll decay.

Everything that exists does so only for a period of time, and nothing is permanent. When you spend a lot of time in the creation or obtainment of something, you don’t want them disappearing, especially if they’re an investment and stand the potential of bringing in money, but even if they’re simply something you’re proud of. Yet they will vanish, erode, decay, or be damaged eventually, and there is no foolproof way of preventing this. I try to be mellow about it, and remember that any image I’ve captured (or missed, for that matter) can be taken again – in theory, at least. And since then, I’ve taken many other images I’m proud of, thousands in fact. But it’s still frustrating, and I hate losing them.

Think about your hard drive right now – if it fails, what are you going to lose forever? If the thought of that is anything more than mildly annoying, back up your crucial files now, and multiple backups aren’t a bad idea. Part of that money that you thought you saved from not using film needs to be spent keeping those electrons in order.

First off, appropriate settings are greatly preferred. The idea is to capture a little window into nature, and inappropriate backgrounds or settings take away from this for the viewer. It works best if you can capture your subject already in place within the right setting, but there are many difficulties with this. Your subject is unlikely to be enamored with the idea of your close approach, and will choose to hide. The natural setting, while realistic, may not be photogenic – dead leaves or branches, complicated backgrounds, too little contrast, or distracting elements are actually pretty common. And even if you manage to get past these, getting decent light on your subject can be very tricky. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve struggled to get the camera lens lined up past concealing foliage, only to have the strobe blocked, or had my subject sitting half in shadow which becomes far too dark on film.

So, sometimes you aim to either alter a setting to work better, by removing distracting elements, cutting light to the background, or forcing a better angle (if you like nature photography, be prepared to crawl around and get filthy and wet.) Sometimes, you’ll simply move or coax your subject into a better location. And sometimes you’ll actually construct a set of some kind in controlled conditions – I find this most useful for insects, but used it extensively for saltwater and brackish subjects when I lived in Florida. Everything in those images is authentic and consistent with the species, but I was able to work without scuba gear and with controlled lighting.

Even with all of that, however, you still want to achieve something more whenever you can. A striking “pose,” an interesting bit of behavior, or even an evocative “expression.” We humans have a fierce tendency to identify animal behavior with our own, which is something I actively discourage, but it still produces stronger reactions when it can be associated with an image. Here, the frog has an almost wistful, contemplative expression, mostly communicated by the angle it sits and the position I chose to shoot from. The image is cropped (from the original horizontal composition) to give it space for this apparent attention, with an imaginary line running along the frog’s gaze to the corner. The position of the forelegs and the toes is casual and relaxed in appearance, rather than tensed and poised to jump. And, for this post, I even placed the image itself so that the frog’s “attention” directs into the text, rather than off the screen as it would have on the opposite side.

There’s more, too. The softbox on the flash prevented harsh shadows, shed light from above rather than direct from the camera, and provided a catchlight in the eyes. The rain kept the frog’s skin moist, which makes the viewer think of tree or aquatic frogs rather than toads. The stems of the leaves all seem to draw towards the frog, and the uppermost one mimics the line of the frog’s jaw and spine for a little harmony. I actually ducked down slightly to have the top leaf frame the frog’s head as it does. None of the leaves are damaged, which would also have provided a negative impact to the viewer.

And there’s one more, extremely subtle thing: the pupils aren’t dilated as they normally might have been in dark conditions. This was because I was using a bright flashlight to focus, but from the standpoint of the viewer, it actually changes the apparent emotion of the frog. Wide pupils indicate excitement, fear, or reaction, which would have said something entirely different about this pose. Instead, the smaller pupils communicate that the frog is relaxed, mellow, and not thinking of going anywhere. In truth, this is entirely inaccurate, but it makes no difference to how this image might be interpreted or used.

This frog was actually found alongside my door, perched on an old windowscreen frame. I moved it to the treebranch you see here, which was a perfectly natural setting for the species, then followed it around looking for poses of opportunity as it shifted position along the branch. The moisture is authentic, since this was immediately following a rain and the leaves were still dripping. Afterwards, I returned it to exactly where I’d found it. Taking this small step for a better setting added remarkably to the image, and the remaining factors were a combination of careful framing, timing, and the positions the frog shifted through. Making the extra effort will change your images for the better.