Snail Highway

We have been really fortunate in getting a lot of rain this year and with this there has been a lot of smaller animals coming out of their hiding spots because there’s so much cover around and food around for them to eat.

As we were driving this massive Giant Land Snail caught my eye on the side of the road. He was in quite a hurry to try and get to the other side of the road. I stopped and climbed out to show my guests this incredible snail (which I normally first crack a joke about) and after having a full conversation about the snail, he eventually came out of his shell and made his way across the road.

This is where I saw the perfect moment for a photo as we had nice soft light coming from behind me and the ground underneath the snail was still wet, which gave it some nice contrast.

Equipment Used

• Camera – Canon 600D
• Lens and focal length – Sigma 150 – 600mm; f/5-6.3 DG OS

Settings used to capture this image

• ISO – 800 as it was overcast, but it was a thin layer of clouds which meant there was still a lot of light to work with.
• Aperture of f- 6.3 because I wanted only the snail’s head in focus and the rest of the shell and background blurred which gives it the feeling that the snail is moving.
• 1/250 shutter speed, which is a low shutter but it was not blurred as I was lying on the ground so had my camera in a very stable position.

Editing used on this image

I wanted to darken the image even more so I pushed the contrast up a bit and even pushed up clarity +15 and made the highlights – 19 just to soften the bright light that was reflecting from the ground.