****rattle****

Posted a new photo to eighteenpercent today. Mostly unremarkable as far as photos go, except for the fact that it a friggin' 2.5' long rattlesnake, in the wild, about 18" from my face.

:-o

The girl and I hit Skyline Drive this past weekend looking for a hike or two to do. While driving along, we see a bigass snake just reaching the edge of the road after making a safe crossing. Knowing there aren't too many bigass snakes in this region, and that there *were* rattlesnakes, I was hoping for something cool.

Threw the car to the side of the road far enough away not to squash my prey, and walked up cautiously to his general area. I took a couple of passes walking in the road, looking to where I thought he should be in the grass along side. Didn't see him, so I decided to hop over the grass, and stand in a concrete gutter and look from a different angle. As my foot hit the concrete, I see him about 10" from my left shoe. That was kinda dumb. Luckily, he didn't seem too pissed; he didn't strike (or even rattle). I spent the next 45 minutes shooting him with every lens I had on me. Unfortunately, I spent most of the time just shooting his head, as most of his body was concealed in tall grass. I did look closely to make sure it was indeed a rattlesnake. He had a rattle. I felt very Steve Irwin.

Many of the shots came out crappy, cuz I guess in the excitement of crawling around a rattler, I neglected to check my shutter speed (blurry shots due to hand shake) and histogram (overexposed shots due to...err...overexposure). Luckily, a few shots came out OK. This was one. Oddly enough, this is with my crappiest 70-300mm lens.