How to Photograph Snakes at Snake Road
Snake Road offers incredible opportunities for wildlife photography, but photographing snakes well requires a little more than simply pointing a camera at one. The animals are often small, surprisingly well camouflaged, and found in lighting conditions that range from bright midday sun to deep shade beneath the forest canopy.
The good news is that you don't need the most expensive camera equipment available to come home with great photographs. The right focal length, careful technique, good lighting, and, most importantly, respect for the animal will make a much bigger difference.
Where (and what) to photograph at Snake Road?
Snake Road offers a huge variety of flora and fauna to photograph. Snakes may be the name of the game (and the road), but they certainly aren't the only things there. This guide will largely focus on snake photography, but most of the advice would apply equally well to photographing frogs, skinks, salamanders, insects, flowers, and other smaller creatures and features at Snake Road. Larger animals often require different equipment, but there are certainly birds and mammals there if that is your interest!
If you're planning your first visit, jump over to our Plan Your Visit page for tons of practical visiting information outside of photography.
As for where, the entire LaRue-Pine Hills area is filled to the brim with photographic opportunities. Snake Road is only a small part of the larger ecological area, so I encourage all readers to consider engaging with the larger ecosystem outside of Snake Road. Nonetheless, this is a website dedicated to Snake Road, so I will focus on that first and foremost.
Snake Road isn’t a monolith of opportunity when it comes to photographing snakes, but there is nowhere on the 2.64-mile road where there is no opportunity. If you look at the graphic to the right, you’ll see all the places along the road where I have photographed a snake in only my last three visits. As you can see, snake sightings are spread out from gate to gate, with a few obvious hot spots.
Species variation is fantastic at Snake Road, but some species are more likely to inhabit certain niches than others. You aren’t likely to find a Timber Rattlesnake swimming in the spring near the northern gate, and finding a Mudsnake up in the bluffs would be pretty unusual as well. Ultimately, if you want to photograph a particular species, it’s helpful to understand the needs and preferences of that species. Take a look at our species guide to brush up on that information if needed.
The test is open book, and many of the answers are in plain view. Watersnakes are most likely found in and around water. Shocking, I know. Mudsnakes… mud. Timber rattlesnakes… you can see where this is going, and if you can’t, perhaps snakes aren’t for you. There’s always crochet.
A quick summary is this: if you walk the road, you are likely to see snakes at almost any point along it, but slightly more likely to see them at a few particular points. In my experience, the portions of the road with the heaviest snake crossing traffic are generally closer to the northern gate, which is why I tend to park on that side. That said, there is one particular spot along the road where I have seen a snake over 90% of the times I’ve walked past it, and that spot is closest to the southern gate. Go figure!
The best way to figure out where snakes are likely to be is to spend time walking the road and talking with experienced herpers. Most people who visit the road are very friendly, so don’t be afraid to spend time talking with people. I can’t make any promises, but I can say that if you see someone in a Snaketoberfest T-Shirt, there’s an extremely good chance they would be a fantastic person to talk to!
Cellphone Photography
What If All I Have Is a Cellphone?
That's completely fine.
You absolutely do not need to carry a dedicated camera to photograph snakes at Snake Road. Modern cellphones have surprisingly capable cameras, and under the right conditions they can produce some solid photographs. They're not going to compete with a good mirrorless camera and a quality macro or telephoto lens, particularly when the light gets difficult, but they're more than capable of documenting your encounters.
In fact, plenty of experienced photographers who are carrying thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment will still pull out their phones for a quick shot. Sometimes you don't need a portfolio image, you just want a record of what you found. A quick cellphone photo can serve as a species tracker, help with identification later, or simply provide a little photographic "proof" of a sighting. If you want to count your snakes without a phone, we have a solution for that as well!
Use the Zoom. Don't Crowd the Snake.
One of the biggest mistakes I see with cellphone photography is people feeling like they need to physically put the phone right next to the animal because the phone has a wide-angle lens.
You don't.
Do not huddle on top of a snake just to fill your phone screen. Give it room, particularly if you're photographing one of Snake Road's venomous species. Use your phone's zoom capabilities instead.
There is an important catch here: whenever possible, use one of your phone's actual optical focal lengths rather than cranking up the digital zoom. Many newer phones have multiple physical cameras, perhaps 1×, 2×, 3× or 5× depending on the model. Those longer lenses are extremely useful for wildlife because they let you make the animal larger in the frame while maintaining your distance. Digital zoom, by comparison, is largely cropping and enlarging the image and can quickly sacrifice detail. A 50x zoom image of a snake is indistinguishable from a stick... which, now that I'm typing this, is right on brand for Snake Road.
If you can't get the tight photograph you wanted without getting too close then just take a wider photograph!
A snake surrounded by the leaves, rocks, vegetation or swamp that make up its natural habitat can make a far more interesting photograph than another tightly cropped picture of a snake anyway. Including the environment is a legitimate, and often more creative, approach to wildlife photography.
Please Don't Take Snake Selfies
Seriously.
Don't take selfies with snakes.
If getting yourself into the photograph requires moving closer to the snake than you otherwise would, you've already made the wrong decision. This is especially important with venomous species. A photograph isn't worth invading an animal's space or putting yourself in a dangerous position.
A good rule of thumb is to be at least as far away from a snake as the snake is long. This snake is roughly 20", and this dashing photographer is 3-4 feet away.
Take the snake's picture. Have someone take a picture of you observing it from an appropriate distance if you really want one. Just don't crouch down next to a wild snake so you can get both of your faces into the same cellphone frame.
Longer-range photographs are safer for both the person and the wildlife.
Cellphones Love Light
If you're hoping for genuinely good cellphone photographs, light is your friend.
This is one area where the difference between a cellphone and a dedicated camera becomes particularly noticeable. The tiny sensors and lenses in phones have improved enormously, but challenging light still exposes their limitations.
Fortunately, most Snake Road encounters happen during the middle of the day. If you have a choice, concentrate your cellphone photography on snakes that are in good natural light. A snake sitting in an open patch of sunlight is going to give your phone much more information to work with than one tucked deep into a dark crevice or buried beneath heavily shaded vegetation.
Better light generally means the phone can use a faster shutter speed and lower ISO, which helps produce a cleaner, sharper photograph. Lighting is especially important with smaller-sensor cameras.
That doesn't mean you can't photograph a snake in the shade. Just temper your expectations and pay extra attention to keeping the phone steady.
Clean Your Lens
This sounds ridiculously obvious but do it anyway.
Your cellphone spends its life in your pocket, in your hand, against your face and covered in fingerprints. A tiny smear across one of those tiny lenses can turn an otherwise good photograph into a hazy mess.
Before you start photographing, wipe the camera lenses clean with a soft cloth. It's one of the easiest ways to improve cellphone image quality and one of the easiest things to forget.
Tell the Phone Where the Snake Is
Don't assume your phone knows what you're trying to photograph.
Snakes are designed to confuse autofocus and tracking systems, usually the one that resides behind your eyes, but it works against the one in your phone as well. They're patterned, low to the ground and frequently surrounded by leaves, sticks, rocks and vegetation with just as much texture as the animal itself.
Tap directly on the snake's head or eye on your screen to focus there.
On many phones you can also press and hold to lock focus and exposure, which can be useful if the snake is moving slowly through cluttered surroundings. Some camera apps provide even greater manual control.
If the snake's face is sharp and the rest of the animal isn't perfect, you've generally made the right compromise. Our eyes naturally go to the animal's eyes.
Take More Than One
Storage is cheap. Lifers aren't.
Don't take one picture, look at it for half a second and assume you nailed it.
Important note: If you're all alone, feel free to take a minute or two if needed. If you're in a crowd, be courteous of others and allow everyone an opportunity to photograph a snake while it is cooperating. There is nothing worse than one unaware person ruining the experience for all the other photographers there.
If the snake is moving, use your phone's burst mode if it has one. Even a relatively slow-moving snake can change its head position between frames, and one photograph may be dramatically sharper or have a much better pose than the one immediately before it. Burst shooting is particularly useful for capturing unpredictable wildlife movement.
You can delete 19 mediocre photographs later. You can't go back and ask the snake to cross the road again. (And, reminder, handling snakes is illegal at Snake Road.)
Keep It Steady
Finally, treat your phone like a camera.
Hold it with two hands when possible. Keep your elbows reasonably close to your body. If there's a convenient tree, rock or other stable surface available without moving closer to the animal, use it to steady yourself.
Then gently press the shutter rather than stabbing at the screen and moving the entire phone in the process. Camera movement at the instant of exposure can reduce sharpness regardless of what kind of camera you're using.
The Best Camera Is the One You Actually Brought
A dedicated camera with a good lens, proper lighting and an experienced photographer behind it is going to give you capabilities that a cellphone simply doesn't have, but that doesn't make your cellphone a bad camera.
If you're walking Snake Road primarily because you want to experience the migration, find snakes and enjoy the place, there's absolutely nothing wrong with leaving the camera bag at home. Keep your phone handy, give the animals plenty of space, look for good light, and document what you find.
After all, a slightly imperfect cellphone photograph of your first Snake Road Timber Rattlesnake is considerably better than no photograph of it at all.
'Real' Camera Recommendations:
I strongly recommend using a mirrorless camera paired with either a dedicated macro lens or a telephoto lens that allows you to photograph snakes without getting unnecessarily close.
If I were recommending one camera for someone building a high-quality Snake Road photography setup today, my personal recommendation would be the Nikon Z6III. It offers an excellent combination of image quality, autofocus performance, speed, and portability without requiring the size and weight of a flagship camera body. That said, this isn't a brand war, there are fantastic cameras built by Sony for this purpose as well. (Or Canon, if you are the kind of person who wants to work harder at everything. So maybe this is a tiny brand war.)
One note, another aspect to consider is the camera screen. While I generally use the OVF/EVF to compose images, it can be very helpful to have a tilt or articulated LCD screen to compose images from difficult positions, whether on the ground to get at a snake's eye level, or overhead if a snake is perched in the bluff or in a tree. Being able to see what you're doing is generally pretty helpful!
For serious snake photography, my preferred setup is a macro lens of 105mm or longer. Personally, I use the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 Z. A longer telephoto lens of at least 200mm can also be extremely useful, particularly when photographing venomous species or animals positioned somewhere that makes a close approach impractical.
Whatever camera you use, the lens matters enormously. You want enough working distance to photograph the animal comfortably while still being able to fill the frame.
Flash Makes a Huge Difference
If you want the best possible results, I strongly recommend carrying a flash and diffuser.
Snake Road is heavily wooded, and many of the best encounters occur in uneven or low light. A properly diffused flash allows you to control the light on the snake, bring out scale detail, reduce harsh shadows, and maintain the smaller apertures needed to keep more of the animal in focus. When it comes to macro photography, that last part is arguably the most important. It's incredible how difficult it is to keep everything in focus!
The above images here show the difference between no flash (left) and OCF flash (right).
If I had to pick one reason why I always carry a flash, it may be to balance sun and shadow. Snakes are often partially sunlit and partially hidden in shade, and by making a flash your main light and allowing the sun to be the fill light, you can create images that are absolutely impossible without a flash.
(The above image is an example of a common lighting scenario at Snake Road, with meaningful differences between sun and shadow. No flash was used in this image.)
Budget Flash Option
You don't need an expensive lighting system to get started. For an affordable on-camera flash, I recommend this budget-friendly flash option. Paired with a diffuser, it can produce excellent results while remaining relatively easy to carry during a long day on the road. It is a Flashpoint brand flash, which is identical to Godox in every way except it is produced by Godox for Adorama and comes with their warranty process which is US based. That's the only reason I would choose it over a Godox branded version which is otherwise identical.
More Powerful Off-Camera Lighting
If you want considerably more power and the flexibility of using the light away from the camera, I recommend this off-camera flash option. (Still a Flashpoint and for the same reasons as listed above. Also, I can testify that these things can truly take a beating. If you ever see me on the road, ask to see my flash. It's battle scarred!) A more powerful light can be especially useful when you want to shape the lighting rather than simply illuminate the subject from directly above the lens. In the event that you go this route, you'll also need a flash trigger. I use this one, R2 Pro.
Flash Diffusers
A diffuser is extremely important for snake photography. Bare flash tends to create harsh reflections on scales, unnatural-looking highlights, dark backgrounds, or just very flat lighting.
(Although it's an acceptable exposure, this image doesn't pop, largely because the light is directly on axis with the lens.)
For an inexpensive solution to this problem, I recommend this affordable diffuser.
If your budget allows for a more purpose-built setup, I recommend this higher-end diffuser. A good diffuser creates a much larger apparent light source, resulting in softer and more natural-looking illumination across the snake's scales. If you can add a flash trigger and get that light off camera entirely, you can truly step up your results!
How Close Should You Get?
For most snakes, I generally try to work from roughly 3–5 feet away. With venomous species, I prefer to remain farther away whenever possible. A general rule of thumb is to be farther away than the snake is long.
There is rarely a photographic reason to crowd an animal. A 105mm macro lens or longer telephoto gives you plenty of working distance while still allowing the snake to fill the frame.
Move slowly. Sudden movements can cause a snake to flee, change position, or become defensive. Give the animal time to become comfortable with your presence and photograph it where you found it.
Never handle, restrain, reposition, or intentionally provoke a snake for a photograph. Besides being completely illegal at Snake Road, doing so changes the natural behavior you're there to document.
Composition: Fill the Frame...Usually
Most of the time, I like the snake to occupy a meaningful portion of the photograph. Snakes are wonderfully detailed animals, and getting close enough with the lens to reveal the texture of the scales, eyes, head shape, and pattern can create incredibly compelling images. It's also very helpful to identify the species afterwards. The Diamondback watersnake is a great example of a species which can be very difficult to identify without quality photos showing the scales around the eye.
A good example of a tight close-up of a Diamondback Watersnake.
However, that doesn't mean every photograph should be a tight portrait.
Sometimes the environment is part of the story. A Copperhead disappearing into autumn leaf litter, a Rough Greensnake surrounded by vibrant foliage, or a Timber Rattlesnake tucked into the rocky bluffs can be much more interesting when enough of the surrounding habitat remains visible to show how naturally the animal fits into the landscape.
The same snake as above, but now showing the wider environment. Which one do you prefer?
Before pressing the shutter, ask yourself whether you're photographing the snake or the snake's place in the environment. Both can produce excellent photographs but are achieved in different ways.
Camera Settings
Snake photography frequently involves a difficult balance between depth of field, shutter speed, and available light.
Aperture
I commonly work between approximately f/8 and f/16. At macro distances, depth of field becomes extremely shallow, so smaller apertures help keep more of the head and body acceptably sharp.
Here's a great example of an aperture that was too small to keep anything beyond the snake's head in focus. This was captured at f/6.3
Apertures smaller than f/16 can certainly be useful when additional depth of field is necessary, but keep in mind that very small apertures can begin to reduce overall sharpness because of diffraction. Diffraction is essentially light waves interfering with each other while passing through the lens, kind of like too many cars attempting to merge into too few lanes, and the result is... less than ideal.
Shutter Speed
As a general rule, I recommend using a shutter speed of at least approximately twice your focal length when shooting handheld. For example, with a 105mm lens, I would generally try to remain around 1/200 second or faster. With a 200mm lens, something around 1/400 second or faster is a safer starting point. This is both about camera shake and snake movement.
Snakes may appear completely stationary but can make tiny head movements that are enough to soften an otherwise sharp photograph. Rough Green Snakes are notorious for their sometimes not-so-subtle waving. Annoying little jerks.
Vibration Reduction
If your camera or lens offers VR, image stabilization, or IBIS (not a gastrointestinal issue, fear not), turn it on when photographing handheld. It can make a substantial difference, particularly when working in the shaded conditions common at Snake Road.
Carrying Camera Gear on Snake Road
One of the less glamorous realities of Snake Road photography is carrying the equipment.
A camera, macro lens, flash, diffuser, batteries, water, and other hiking gear can become burdensome surprisingly quickly, especially after several miles. The first trip down the road may not be a big deal, but the fourth or fifth usually is. At my age, my back is usually talking with me before I complete a full round trip and arguing with me before the end of my second.
Small Camera Backpack
For most photographers, a small camera backpack is probably the simplest solution. It keeps the gear protected while distributing the weight more comfortably than a traditional shoulder bag.
I like this compact camera backpack for carrying a relatively small field setup without hauling a full-size photography pack down the road.
The downside to this is speed. In the event a snake is booking it across the road, you may not have time to even get a shot off before it disappears into the leaves. Maybe not a big deal if it's your 102nd Cottonmouth, but a much bigger deal if it's your Snake Road Lifer Mudsnake. Actually, if I missed a photo of my Snake Road Lifer Mudsnake, I might actually cry. Which brings me to my setup...
Camera Holster System
Personally, I prefer carrying my camera on a belt rather than repeatedly taking it in and out of a backpack.
I use a Spider-style camera holster system, which allows the camera to hang securely from my belt while remaining immediately accessible when I find something worth photographing.
You can find the type of system I use here.
With the camera mounted on one side and an eVOLV 200-style flash carried on the other, I can keep both the camera and lighting system on my belt instead of loading everything into a backpack. For the way I photograph Snake Road, that makes a long day considerably more comfortable and keeps the camera ready when an opportunity appears. From the time I decide to take a photo until the time I am physically able to do so is about 2-3 seconds with this particular combination.
Respect the Animal
Above everything else, remember why you're there.
The goal should be to photograph the snake behaving naturally, not to force it into the photograph you had imagined before you arrived. After all, the snake isn't there for you, you are there for the snake.
Keep a respectful distance, move slowly, avoid blocking the animal's escape route, and allow the snake to leave whenever it chooses. Some of my favorite wildlife photographs come from simply watching an animal long enough to see what it does on its own.
Snake Road provides extraordinary photographic opportunities precisely because these animals are allowed to move through the landscape naturally. The best photographs help people appreciate that experience without interfering with it.
Also, while it's clear that I am personally there to photograph snakes, there is no doubt that Snake Road and the surrounding LaRue-Pine Hills area is home to an incredible variety of incredible wildlife. No matter what you want to photograph, there's a good chance you'll find that niche here!
