Electrical or Light reflection

On another forum, a picture was posted of a bull snake with what appears to be lightning bolts coming from his tongue. I suggested that it was from the lighting and shutter speed, but the author of the photo says because he used a "speedlight" that it can't be. What do you think?

Capture My Arizona Photo Contest - Electric connection by Joshua Esquivel

It looks to me that it is the snakes tongue vibrating and due to the slow shutter speed it has created a light painting effect. And with him saying everything was frozen there is too much movement from him for it to be frozen, also the tongue would be "sharp" if frozen.

I may be wrong but I think you're right... looks like motion blur from the specular highlights (these tongues move *fast*). Not fast enough that they'd turn into a Tesla coil, however

What Scott said.

If he used a flash, what would his shutter be? 1/200th or something? That's not nearly enough to freeze the tongue movement.



Similar curve me thinks.

Thanks for the confirmation on what I was trying to tell the individual. If you look close the snake's left fork of its' tongue is actually "two", one top and bottom, indicating not being frozen. The right fork, with the lightning bolts is blurred. I think the author of the photo wants to believe that he captured something "supernatural", but IMHO he just happened to capture a unique shot, accidentally, with his light/camera settings.

J-See, I looked that same info up last night. Ha! I just didn't know exactly how to put it into words. Ha!

I will have to look it up but I shot a water feature once that gave these effects on the water flowing down on the rock. It looked the same as the snakes tongue.

cwgrizz said:

J-See, I looked that same info up last night. Ha! I just didn't know exactly how to put it into words. Ha!

Click to expand...

I blew up the tongue in PS and you clearly see "noise" around the tongue. That wouldn't be there if frozen. If he looks at his RAW or JPEG at 100%; it should be obvious it suffered motion blur.

Still a cool effect.

There is no indication of a speedlight other than the eye. The main light source appears to be from above. So, the pseudo lightning is apparent over-exposed snake spit on an under-exposed tongue.

J-see said:

If he used a flash, what would his shutter be? 1/200th or something? That's not nearly enough to freeze the tongue movement.

Click to expand...

With high speed sync (Nikon) you can shoot with flash up to 1/4000 on a D600. I'll remember that next time I'm at the herpetarium.

Wow, a snake that spits lightning.... and I thought the animals in Australia were scary

singlerosa said:

With high speed sync (Nikon) you can shoot with flash up to 1/4000 on a D600. I'll remember that next time I'm at the herpetarium.

Click to expand...

That is if you use a speedlight not if you use onboard flash

Here is the same type of effect. This is moving water on a water feature. First shot is full and second is at about 75%. This was shot about 2 years ago with my D3100