Gecky {Allen, TX Pet Photographer}

My son Stephen purchased his first pet a few weeks ago. In honor of National Pet Week (which the internet said was actually last week), I wanted to introduce you all to our family's first pet.

Meet Gecky! He's a Leopard Ghecko.

Like the name? Very creative, huh? He/she (We don't know it's sex yet.) would have been called RabbitY if it were a rabbit, or WormY if it were a worm, or fishY if it were a fish. My almost 6 year old is very practical....


This is my husband Steve handling Gecky. I actually haven't gotten up enough nerve yet to hold him myself. He eats Meal Worms (which live in my refrigerator) and LIVE crickets. YUMMMY! Thank goodness the rule in our house is, "Feed your own pets."

For those photographer friends of mine out there, here's the shot "recipe" for the image above:

f 2.8 at 1/25th of a second. ISO 6400. I shot this with my 70-200 mm f 2.8 lens late at night (right before bedtime) with a tungsten lamp as the only available light. I LOVE my Canon Mark II 5D - although I hear "talk" that Nikon has better low-light focussing capability. My Canon does not focus well in low light at all. I actually had to manually focus for this shot.

Now, it's time for you to take a picture of your pet. It is (or was) National Pet week after all. Don't forget to use a large aperture (low f-stop number) to isolate your pet from the background to help him stand out more. You hang up portraits of the other members of you family - why not your pet?