Unless they don't see you at all (an unlikely event unless you've been still for a long time and catch them sunning or something), photographing wild snakes is pretty difficult.

But today I startled a garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) in my yard, moving way too fast for pictures, but not so fast that I couldn't manage to catch it with my hand.

A freshly caught garter snake will usually bite and also spray foul-smelling anal musk as a deterrent, but I was very gentle, and let the snake move from hand to hand instead of gripping it tightly. This seemed to fool the snake into thinking it was still going somewhere, so I was neither bitten nor "musked." After handling the snake for ten minutes or so, I thought it wouldn't be in quite as much of a hurry to get away, so I put it down and took as many pictures as this temporary "charm" might allow.

I'm afraid the snake just didn't share my interest in herpetological photography, because no sooner did it find a large crack in the concrete than it disappeared deep inside it -- before the camera had had time to recover from the previous shot.

(I think I'll spare readers the indignity of having to look at a picture of a crack. Some things are better left to the imagination.)