Colin Donihue

A few posts ago I talked about the tough time I was having taking a picture of the undersides of these little lizards. Well, I have a new solution that seems to be working great! Credit goes to Dr. Herrel in Paris.

My printer has a built in flat-bed scanner. Lizard, scanner – put the two together, and voila! Who’d’a thought!

It seems that the best way to keep the lizard still is to place a white paper over the top of the lizard and to lightly press down with your hand. Don’t slam down the clamshell top! Using the “sleeping” trick we’ve even been getting decent pictures of lizard backs too!

The technique came a little late for the bulk of this year’s lizards, but all of my introduction lizards were nicely scanned. I’ve a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of lizard scanning next year to get a better handle on these color morphs!

Here’s a look at what a scanned lizard looks like: Maybe not the most “natural” of poses, but the data’s great – consistent light source, identical photo conditions. This technique is totally going to work!