Ron Shoots

What do you do on rainy days on a family vacation? How about visiting one of those roadside tourist attractions with crocodile and snake shows… there must be at least a few hours of entertainment value and maybe a few stock photos!

I was pleasantly surprised- lots of stuff to shoot in this manmade “natural” habitat here in northeastern Australia. And I even learned a few things about crocodiles. These reptiles have been around for 70 million years- and the sex of the baby croc is determined by the temperature of the nest. (Can’t wait to use these fun facts on my shoot with humans!)

Always fascinated by details, I shot with a 300mm and zoomed in close. The habitats were set-up so you could safely be within a few feet of the crocodiles. While I shoot mostly people and a few aerials or landscape, I enjoyed venturing into a few “wildlife” images. (True appreciation goes to real wildlife shooters who spend days researching and finding great shots of animals in their truly natural habitat! I could only hope to do this kind of work…)

How NOT to shoot a crocodile!

I did learn that a croc can only run about 8 mph on land. So if you happen to encounter one on land, just sprint like crazy and you will outrun the bad boy. And another tidbit… in Australia, there’s a 50% greater chance of dying from a bee sting than from a croc attack. Aren’t you glad you have all this knowledge? I promise, the next post will be more about photography!

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TECH NOTE: Both ronshoots.com and ronchapple.com endured hacker attacks over the past few days. My apologies if our sites were down or acting strange. This only affected the sites, not the database or subscriber lists.