Catch, photograph, and release

Our cats kill any gecko unfortunate enough to wander into our house - not out of malice, but simply because they pounce on it and play with it until the poor things invariably die, to be discovered by us a few months later, tucked under some rug, dried up and dessicated.

As result of this, my wife and I make every effort to capture and relocate geckos that wander in. By "capture", I mean me standing on a ladder with a tupperware container trying to corner a terrified gecko up on the ceiling. By "relocate", I mean me taking the gecko out and letting him go on the wall in the corridor, near a nice ceiling light where he can feast on insects that congregate there - and hopefully not come back into our apartment!

After I caught this little fellow, I thought I should take the opportunity to photograph him. The tupperware container was tranluscent, not transparent, so I got a spare piece of glass from the study to place underneath him. K helped me hold him up against the light, and very astutely suggested that the lighting would be much better if we diffused the light, which meant putting a piece of white paper over the lamp. I took this photo from below, after about 20 tries (yes, that's how long it takes: fiddly set up, moving lizard, and a camera autofocus not quite up to focusing on a near object with harsh backlighting).

He's so tiny (only about 2 inches in real life) you can see right through him - lungs, vertabrae, and what sees to be a gut full of semi-digested insect. (take a look at the bigger version in flickr)

tags:photography,photoblog,fotoblog,gecko