I nailed a snail

Blip wise, yesterday was very disappointing, other than a little grainy atmosphere, the shot simply had nothing going for it. But, with nothing else working out in the day, I had no choice but to go with the back-up, in fact I nearly left the day blank. You have to take the bad days with the good, so first thing this morning I back blipped it.

I found this handsome little devil tearing up the pavement very early this morning. Surprisingly, snails are not the easiest subjects, famous for being slow groovers, they move just fast enough to blur your expectations. Also, exposure is a big problem too, but I learned from a previous snail session and over exposed one stop for a good balance.

My first snail session a few weeks ago was a total disaster. My plan was to PS the shot to give the impression of speed, but after three trips to the process lab and over a hundred shots, I still didn't get what I wanted.

The snail was also messing with my head, as soon as I got down for the shot, he retreated into his living room and made me wait ten minutes. After the first processing, I had to return for more and once again he made me wait, this time for longer. All in all, the shoot and processing took about three hours and I had nothing!

Today, I kept it basic, but still I took about fifty shots to get what I almost wanted. If you had suggested a year ago that I would spend hours slithering around on my belly, on the pavement at 05:30am, trying to photograph a snail, cursing because it moved so fast, then I might have hinted that you have an overactive imagination. This is the curse of blip.

Dave