Subject: Stonefish are capable of sloughing their skin. Reef Stonefish (Synanceia verrucosa) only partially discard their skin so that several layers accumulate overtime. Algae and other fouling organisms will invade the discarded skin accumulation and this contributes to the close to perfect camouflage and warty appearance of this venomous ambush predator. When the stack of incompletely molded layers becomes too thick the animal sloughs all the accumulated layers entirely to remain protected by its newest and youngest layer only.
Technique: I often like to start with showing the zoomed-in details of my subject so that viewers initially don’t realize what they are looking at, only to reveal the bigger picture at the end to create that “ooh! Woaw, now I see it” effect.
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