Where the Wild Meets the Window
Meet Frederick The Frog
It is amazing what you can discover in your own backyard—and even more amazing what might appear on your bedroom window. I decided to name this small squirrel tree frog Frederick because the name came to me the moment I saw him. After my wife pointed him out, I grabbed my camera to see what I could capture. Frederick was a fascinating little subject: still, patient, and almost curious as he stared into the lens. I photographed him with a 90 mm Sony macro lens on a Sony A7R V. What I enjoy most about suburban wildlife is how it can deliver an exotic experience without requiring you to travel beyond your own yard. Wildlife is always doing something new and unexpected, and it can be just as compelling as anything found elsewhere on the planet. While there are extraordinary animals across the world, we should not overlook the wondrous creatures living quietly in our own neighborhoods. All we need to do is slow down, take a few minutes, and truly look. Wildlife can surprise us, just like Frederick did—appearing seemingly out of nowhere and offering the simple joy of photographing something remarkable.
This photograph was not particularly difficult to capture, but it did require a little patience and careful positioning. Frederick was perched fairly high on the window, so I used my height—6 feet 6 inches—and the LCD panel on the back of my camera to frame several frontal shots of him staring directly into the macro lens. I moved around him, leaned down, stretched upward, and explored every angle that seemed potentially interesting. In this moment, Frederick was remarkably cooperative, choosing to stay put rather than hop, skip, or jump away.
Frederick the Frog gave me the perfect opportunity to photograph him in what first seemed an unnatural setting: clinging to a bedroom window on a cool, damp summer morning. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Frederick was still very much within his natural world. His habitat includes not only plants, grasses, and the large nearby retaining pond, but also the convenient windows of his human neighbors’ homes. In that sense, when we capture suburban wildlife in moments like this, we are not photographing creatures out of place—we are documenting the expanded habitat they have learned to share with us.
Captured with the Sony A7R V with a 90mm Sony Macro Lens, these images were refined in DxO PhotoLab 10 to bring out their cleanest and most expressive detail. The choice of a swift 1/1250-second shutter speed preserved sharpness in the moment, but it also pushed the camera’s auto ISO to 6400, introducing visible noise. With PhotoLab 10’s DeepPRIME 3 noise reduction and carefully balanced luminance, contrast, and microcontrast adjustments, the final photographs retain their texture and clarity while taking on a more graceful, publication-ready finish.
Stuart F. James (sfj@stuartphoto.com)
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