I’ve always wanted cool pics of my herps but clearly I suck at taking pictures 
. I don’t have a camera and I an limited to an iPhone 8 when it comes to taking pictures. Any tips?
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Working with limited equipment lighting is key.
Ideally an overcast day directly under where the sun would be will likely yield good photos with your iPhone.
Play around with different snake positions and angles and figure out what works. Ball pythons are great to shoot in-hand if they’re small enough. You generally want them compacted as much as possible while still showing as much pattern as possible.
Sometimes “portrait mode”, or whatever iPhone’s equivalent of that is, will provide a nice blurred background, but may be too slow to process and take the photo if your snake is moving around a lot. Trial and error!
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Seems silly, but clean your lenses often. Also if your vision is bad, new glasses always help me take better photos 
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This is me! Wondering why the pics are all blurry…
Daughter: Dad, clean your glasses old man…
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Your snakey is very photogenic 
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I have t used my canon in years. Everything is done on my phone. Most people struggle with photo composition. As mentioned above, overcast days are great as long as the sun is somewhat high in the sky. 5600k lighting on a neutral background (most prefer white) also work quite well.
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I think you’ve got a pretty good start already. I especially love that last photo! However, is there a certain style of photography you’re wanting tips on? Or are you struggling more with lighting/posing?
It depends a lot on the kind of pictures you want to take. For style, I get bored quickly with taking the same old “snake on plain background” or “snake in outstretched hand” shots over and over again just with different animals (not that I don’t still take those, especially when I just want a quick update pic). So I end up looking through pinterest or instagram a lot for flatlays or neat photo ideas that would be easy to modify for a wiggly snake.
Surprisingly, I’ve actually gotten a lot of inspiration from food photography lately. And I know there are plenty of iphone photography tips/hacks/idea videos and the like on youtube! So that may be something worth looking into.
And for lighting, I’m honestly still figuring that stuff out myself since my house has horrid window placements. But as others have said, over cast days, or sunny days in the shade if you can swing it (unless you want to learn how to play around with dynamic lighting/shadows), are going to be your best friend for outdoor photos. For indoors what helped me the most was getting a light diffuser (could be something “official”, could be a thin white sheet, whatever works) for putting in front of whichever window I happen to set up in. Again I would suggest looking up some videos or tutorials on how to use natural or artificial lighting indoors.
I love this one from The Bite Shot on youtube: Food Photography with Indoor Natural Lighting - YouTube
I know her channel is mainly food photography oriented, but she has a lot of cool info and techniques. And she’s certainly not the only one! While there’s always going to be stuff that’s hard to use with animals because you can’t exactly ask a snake to hold still no matter how much you beg (facts), take a look around and see what you like!
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