Go, go, goanna!

A goanna is essentially a large lizard, technically a monitor lizard. This particular goanna is around a metre long, and there are monitors which grow larger (the largest reach 2.5m), but this goanna would definitely give you cause to pause. He’s a big boy, with serious claws. You get to see his forked tongue in the second and third shots.

These were shot with the 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II, at ISO 500, f/2.8 (arguably I should have used more depth of field, but I like the emphasis this puts on his head). First shot is at 109mm (to get the detail of his head), the other two are all the way out at 70mm. The first two are 1/800, the last at 1//500. The first shot is uncropped, the second a little cropped, and the last cropped to a square – each felt like the appropriate crop for the image.

The last shot gives you an idea of how much of this goanna is tail, and there is quite a bit of it!