Glass Frog — Centrolenidae Transparent Belly Close-Up

Description

Glass frog photography — specifically from below to capture the transparency of the ventral skin that gives these Central and South American frogs their name — requires the photographer to work with the amphibian on a glass plate or transparent leaf surface, the camera positioned below and shooting upward through the surface. This image was made with a captive-bred Centrolenidae frog placed on a glass surface, the camera below looking upward through the glass at the frog’s ventral surface illuminated from above by a ring flash. The transparent skin of the belly reveals the internal anatomy with extraordinary clarity: the red heart is visible as a beating chamber below the pectoral girdle, the green liver is visible at the body’s midline, the digestive tract as a tan coil below the liver, and the white fat bodies flanking the viscera communicate the frog’s nutritional condition. The four adhesive toe pads are also visible from below.