The incredible beauty of venomous snakes in Mark Light's photo project

Photographer Mark Laita decided to capture the beauty of snakes for his book "Serpentine". It is a collection of pictures of brightly lit snakes on a black background. While working on the book, the photographer captured the moment of the bite of a deadly snake in his own leg.

Mark Laita was born in Detroit in 1960. His parents are from Lithuania. I took up photography at the age of 10. Today he is a famous photographer based in Los Angeles. His photographs were used for advertising campaigns by brands such as Adidas, Mercedes-Benz, Apple, BMW, Visa.

When creating the Serpentine project, Mark traveled around the USA and Central America to photograph the deadliest snakes in the world. He also worked with collectors, breeders, zoos and even laboratories for the manufacture of antidotes. The black background of the photos emphasizes the brightness, flexibility and grace of these creatures.

One of the snakes he chose for the book was the deadly black mamba. These snakes living in Africa are very aggressive. Despite all the precautions on the set, the owner of the snake had an unforeseen incident when he was holding her on the hook. The hook caught on the red wire, the snake got scared and bit the photographer in the leg.

Fortunately for Mark, either it was a "dry bite" in which the snake chose not to inject the poison, or the poison was immediately washed out due to severe bleeding from the bite site. He was incredibly lucky to survive, and he continued to work on his project about snakes.