Turtles (Three photographs and a word about light)

To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.com

These are common painted turtles. The thing about turtles is that when they sun themselves, their shells reflect the sun. You can doge and burn that effect away or leave it but turtles on a lake in broad daylight will almost certainly have specular highlights. The second thing is that like portraits of people wearing caps, some of the turtles most interesting color and texture is shaded from the light, opening the shadows only goes so far. Use of color filters in black and white conversion brings out more detail from the shadow. Finding turtles in good light is one thing but processing the photograph to show that light and your subject is another thing altogether.