Artist Highlight

Steven Daniel is an award-winning photojournalist. His work has been published both nationally and internationally.

"For my new frog series, I use a portrait studio and an elaborate lighting set-up and one or more live frogs. In many cases I’ll use backgrounds painted by a fellow artist. I use realistic-looking miniatures, such as the four-inch drum set in the "Drummer Frog" picture, to create a lifelike scene. A patient assistant wrangles the frogs into position, as in the "Electric Frog" photograph in which the frog's hands are placed on the tiny guitar strings.  

The frogs are unpredictable, and many times the final image isn't what I originally planned. People frequently ask how I get the frogs to stay in place, and the answer is that I don't. I just need the frog to be still for 1/60th of a second. And in many cases, they're photographed in motion: the frogs crawl, climb, and jump, as frogs do. I just try to catch them at the right moment. When I'm successful, it looks like trick photography. But they’re not composites or computer-generated images. The frogs are real - and so are the photographs."