Eastern Water Dragons have long been on my list of species to shoot - and though they're not hard to find, they're still difficult to photograph if you're not in Australia all that often!

I'd heard stories of colourful, spiny crested lizards of over a metre in length laying on the shores of Eastern Australia every since I was a child... so the first opportunity I had to get over to New South Wales and Queensland, I set out with camera in hand to photograph some of these beautiful, prehistoric-looking creatures.

This impressive individual was in between basking spots, just off of the sandy beaches at Rainbow Bay in Southern Queensland. He was almost a metre long and the colours along the sides of his body and head didn't disappoint. I got down onto the ground with him and took a whole series of shots as he eyed me cautiously - the dappled sunlight illuminating patches of his spiny scales beautifully for the images!

He was surprisingly one of many, many lizards in the area - all of them quite unperturbed by the bustle of tourists and surfers (and me!) moving around them...

The Equipment:

Canon EOS 5D MkIV

Sigma 150-600mm

Adobe Photoshop

The Settings:

Shoot Mode: Manual

Shutter Speed: 1/640

Aperture: f/5.6

ISO: 320

Focal Length: 252mm