I wasn't pleased with the background which had some darker and some lighter grey areas which I thought to be distracting.
This was caused by the folds in the white paper towel that I draped at the end of the light diffuser to serve as a backdrop. Some folds created those darker areas.
Although the paper towel was pure white, it was placed a few inches away from the Centipede and due to the physical laws of light, the fall off made the white appear grey. Had it been even a few inches further away it would have been black.
Thanks, Mark. If I keep plugging along eventually I may get a good one from time to time. Controlling the background is a challenge in itself. I find it quite interesting how fast the light falls off from the source to the background. A bright white paper towel a just few inches away appears to be grey.
Photography truly is painting with light.
nice job, much better lighting
I'm learning that lighting the background is as important as lighting the subject for staged shots. Shooting critters 'on the hoof' allows the light splashing on the background to reflect and interact with the subject. I find that when there is no immediate background (like shooting a spider on a web or a subject mounted on a pin) that the light continues to fall off past the subject and the background becomes dark or even black.
Hence, I will explore shooting mounted subjects much like portrait photography where they take advantage of reflectors and use backdrops. Time is on my side now and the worst that will happen is I hit the delete key.
sippyjug104 wrote:
Thanks, Mark. If I keep plugging along eventually I may get a good one from time to time. Controlling the background is a challenge in itself. I find it quite interesting how fast the light falls off from the source to the background. A bright white paper towel a just few inches away appears to be grey.
Photography truly is painting with light.
I believe the law is that light diminishes with the square of the distance.
Bill
Bill, quite true. As I always told my fellows at work, physics is not just a good idea....it's the LAW.
As the distance from the source of light to the subject increases, the light must spread out over a larger surface and the surface brightness decreases in accordance to the squared relationship.
Although I put a white paper towel at the end of my diffuser "light tunnel" it's just far enough away from the source that in relation to the light shining on the subject, it gets less intensity and the camera captures it as some shade of grey. If it were even further back, it would appear to be black.
This is the difficulty that I find when I shoot spiders in webs. Even though it is sunny outdoors, the flash becomes the source of light and as it goes past the spider there is nothing close to reflect it, hece I get a black background using a flash on a spider in a web on a sunny day.
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