Here are a few tips from the book Frogs: A Chorus of Colors by John and Deborah Behler, which has a chapter on photographing these well-camouflaged creatures:

• Try to learn about the animal first. What is its habitat? When are they active?
• Walk slowly and stop frequently [it helps to have someone with you who is less than 3 feet tall and has sharp eyes]. Frogs and toads blend in so well that they are hard to find. Be alert for subtle movements.
• In summer, you might find the sit-and-wait frog predators hanging out on the edges of ponds and lakes.
• Be aware of the position of the sun. Avoid taking pictures at midday on bright sunny days. In the morning, face east and it will keep sunlight from coming into your lens and washing out your photos.
• Don’t necessarily put the subject in the middle of the photo. Keep the whole animal in the photo, but compose the picture so the background tells a story.
• Bracket your photos, i.e., take the same shot with different settings. Also, try taking a flash photo. Without a flash, animals in photos may look lifeless and poorly lighted.
• Try to be on the same level as your subject.
• State parks, bird sanctuaries, and wildlife refuges are good places to find amphibians.

You don’t need a fancy camera to get interesting shots. I took this photo of a  spring peeper in low light with a Kodak EasyShare camera on the Flower Setting (might be called “close up” on your camera). When we were traveling in Virginia, my husband stopped the car so that we could listen to the peepers. Although peepers are often heard with their distinct high-pitched “peeps,” they are seldom seen. My son spotted the peeper below, but it took my husband and I about five minutes before we were able to see the inch-long and extremely well-camouflaged frog. Once we spotted it, the frog sat stock still for a few minutes to allow all three of us to behave like amphibian paparazzi (we took a dozen pictures before the frog had had enough and hopped off).

I think this is one of the reasons I enjoy photographing frogs: they have a survival behavior that causes them to freeze when they sense danger, in order to avoid detection from predators (unlike mammals like rabbits, deer etc, which will hop or run off long before you’ve even focused) so that it’s possible to get some great pictures of them.

spring peeper, photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

For inspiration, we recommend taking a look at the book Frog: A Photographic Portrait, a gorgeous collection of photographs by wildlife photographer Thomas Marent, who traveled to rainforests all over the world to photograph unusual amphibians. As he says, “The variety of colors, shapes, and sounds of frogs is truly spectacular, and a wildlife photographer’s dream….!”

Don’t forget to submit your best amphibian photograph to our 3rd Annual Photo Contest!

FROG: A PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT by Thomas Marent

Renowned science writer Carl Safina describes spring peepers so beautifully in his new book The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World. I enjoy reading anything by Safina, who usually writes about the ocean, sea animals, or birds. He’s won many awards for his work, including the MacArthur “genius award.” Safina’s writing reminds me of Rachel Carson’s—very lyrical, yet not sentimental. In this book, he writes mainly about a year he spent in a cabin on Long Island. In the chapter, ”March: Out Like a Lamb, “ he writes this about spring peepers:

I open a window to let in the season’s lushest, most delicious sound. It’s from tiny tree frogs that come to water to go a-courting—Spring Peepers. So far, these little amphibians remain abundant. And for as long as they’ve been, and as long as they are, their singing makes the difference between the night of winter and the breath of spring…

Hearing them is easy. Seeing them takes some effort. But even after I step into the shallows as deep as my boots allow, even though I hear calls coming from the half-submerged vegetation right around me—well within the halo of my flashlight—they’re all but invisible. They’re smaller than the tip of your thumb, colored like dead leaves. The majority of my neighbors—even many who were raised here— have never seen one. Many people assume the callers are crickets. But the sound and the season are so different, one might logically assume the moon is just the sun at night.

Safina goes on to describe how as a teenager he taught himself how to find spring peepers by following the sound into the woods at night, but they were very elusive. He finally found one and

…when that tiny movement caught my eye, I saw the littlest frog I’d ever seen, his bubble-gum throat puffed almost as big as his body, calling his heart out. That mighty sound from that tiny body appealed to my teenage sensibilities. His was a strong, clear voice, defiantly undaunted about being so small a soul in so big a world.

Spring peepers Safina writes are a “strong and joyous life-affirming presence” and he would

…gladly suffer a chilly bedroom just to open a window in spring when the peepers are at their peak, and let the exuberant trilling chorus resonate in my chest. “We’re alive,” they seem to say, “and time is short.” No sound in our region is so welcome and welcoming, so revivifying, as peepers in full spring chorus. Or so seemingly unlikely. Out of dust, God is said to have made one man. But here, out of mud, such song!

To celebrate peepers and spring, Susan created a poster for Earth Day 2011, with a wonderful photograph by Richard D. Bartlett. Enjoy!