This first shot, I got pretty close to this snake, pushing the minimum focusing distance of 3.2 feet on my Canon 100-400mm telephoto lens for this very nice close-up.
Don’t worry – I had observed the snake for a long while before approaching this close, and it had shown no signs of aggression. I was actually more concerned with any snakes I might have missed that were hiding in a crevice and I might accidentally intrude on its space… one like this that was sitting out and could see me slowly approaching, I figured would let me know if I was getting too close.
This other one, I only saw briefly as it poked its head up above the rocks to take a look around. At the time, I noticed how lightly colored it was compared to the others, but it wasn’t until later when I looked at the photos more closely that I noticed that absolutely beautiful blue eye. I’m not sure how common that is with rattlesnakes, but none of the others I photographed that day had eyes like this – they were all either tan as above or black.
Note: At least on my computer, the blue color shows up much nicer in the lightbox, so click on the photo to view it that way and see the cool blue color better.
This is a tighter crop than I normally would do, but I figured it was worth it for such a unique subject. I might have to go back to Wolf Rocks and see if I can get some more photos of this individual in particular, but more rattlesnake photos in general would be cool.
