A Water Dragon Portrait

Also published in PSA News Australia.

Looking at this portrait, you might imagine that I used a 600 mm lens, perhaps with a 1.4× or even a 2× extender. The water dragon fills the frame, with every scale inviting a closer look.

In fact, I took the photograph with my iPhone 14 Pro Max. Surprised?

One afternoon, I visited the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra about two hours before sunset. When I noticed this water dragon, my phone was the only camera I had with me. Rather than moving straight towards it, I spent time watching its behaviour from a distance.

That observation became the most important part of making the photograph. I moved very slowly, allowing long pauses between small changes in position. My aim was to avoid startling it and give it time to become accustomed to my presence. After an hour or so, I was able to photograph it closely enough to fill the frame at the phone’s 1× setting. I did not crop the image afterwards.

Every animal responds differently, and remaining still does not necessarily mean it is comfortable. Respecting its space was more important than getting the photograph.

At this distance, the familiar shape of a lizard’s head became a landscape of its own. The eye provides a strong point of attention, while the overlapping scales offer an extraordinary variety of shapes and textures. During post-processing, I darkened the background to give the portrait the appearance of a studio photograph. This brought more attention to the dragon’s face and separated its outline from the surroundings.

This adjustment needed particular care around the edge of the subject. A selection that looks convincing at first can leave a bright halo once the background is darkened. I had to refine the boundary so that the scales and irregular outline remained believable. My advice is to inspect the edge closely, then check the whole image again at its intended viewing size. An edge can look tidy when enlarged yet still feel unnatural in the finished photograph.

Next, I reduced the brightness of the highlights on the face. Some areas were attracting more attention than I wanted, and bringing them down helped balance the tones. I wanted to retain the sense of form while allowing the finer textures to remain visible.

My original intention was to try a black-and-white interpretation. I thought removing the colour might emphasise the skin’s remarkable detail. I tried several black-and-white conversion settings, but none gave me quite the result I wanted. Then I suddenly thought: why not try the opposite and increase the saturation to make the colours stronger? As I moved the slider towards stronger saturation, I found myself thinking, “Wow!” The result really surprised me.

The colours in the original photograph had seemed quite subdued. As I increased the saturation, differences across the scales became much more noticeable. Gold and yellow appeared alongside cooler blue-green tones, and the eye became even more striking.

I then reduced the yellow saturation locally, as some areas had become too strong for my taste. This made the colour balance feel more natural to me, although the finished image remained an expressive interpretation. I found myself looking at the same animal with a new sense of curiosity.

I kept returning to the image. I felt as though I was discovering “hidden colours”, even though I was amplifying colour differences already recorded in the photograph. What fascinated me was how those adjustments changed my response to the same subject. The scales took on a different visual character, prompting me to think about how colour shapes our understanding of what we see.

This finished image is an artistic interpretation of a natural subject. Both the enhanced colour and the deliberate darkening of the background would need to be considered against the rules of any Nature competition. Here, my purpose was to explore how colour could change my response to the dragon, and I think it is important to be open about those choices.

Finding something extraordinary in the ordinary has always been part of my philosophy of photography. A water dragon encountered during an afternoon visit became a reason to slow down and look more carefully. Later, a simple experiment in editing encouraged me to reconsider what colour does to our perception. I came away with a photograph I enjoyed and a greater curiosity about the beauty we can so easily walk past.