The water dragon

[Angi]

Another one taken at work this week. I took this one against a dark blue background, but ended up using curves to darken it, plus I used the burn tool to bring out the wood colour and details.

[CWD]

Very nice !

[macro junkie]

love the dragon.lovely image ang.


.i have a challenge for..and if u can pull off good shots i would like to know how u did it..look at this image.look at the background.i want to shoot like this..im loving the background..he said he used card which he painted randomly..then he use flash to light up background and 1 for subject// i know u only have 1 flash but im sure u could still pull it off.. let me know if u do..because tbh black backgrounds i dont really like..i do it alot and i think its spoiling my shots..i would rather have a background like this any day.. Untitled: Photo by Photographer Igor Siwanowicz - photo.net

u think u could do it?
Untitled: Photo by Photographer Igor Siwanowicz - photo.net

i have 2 flashes but i dont have the background.i need to get my ass in gear and make somthing.

[Angi]

You mean like this?








Yup, it can be done easily
Now shall I tell you how you can achieve it, lol?????? Hmmm how much shall I charge?

Is all about your depth of field. I know you like to use an aperture of 8-14 generally, which is fabulous for macro work, but you end up with everything else fairly in focus too. I struggled with this one for a while. I wanted to achieve the affect "baker" does on ephotozine (check out his portfolio).
Initially I did not achieve it to my satisfaction, then I tried using my 70-300 zoom lens and ended up with similar results. Now I use a shallower depth of feld with my macro lens or kit lens. I tend to place flowers within a vase or a pot of strong hair wax to stand them up, or sometimes I wind a piece of very thin wire around them and stick them in a hole in the ground. I choose my site carefully, trying to make sure the background is a good distance away as this helps to blend it better. I have a patio which is a couple of foo high and I often place things on the edge of it so the grass/background plants etc are further away. Then I use an aperture of anything from 2.8 to 11,but usually around 4-7. For flater subjects you can get away with a 2.8, but with anything that has more depth to it then 5.6 or above works better.
Im going to take some this afternoon - have a go and I will see you in the general area to se how we both fared.

[macro junkie]

The link i gave u is off igors work..he shoots in f/18 so i know it can be done that way..im thinking 2 flashes is going to be needed?

[macro junkie]

also im not on about shooting in the garden with grass in background as thats pretty easy.i mean studio indoors using some sort of backdrop...its mainly for my lizard when i buy one..thanks angie

[Angi]

Ah! Then I would strongly suspect that he blurs the background in photoshop afterwards as F18 is not likely to produce a blurred bg like that, unless the background is situated quite a way behind the subject.

[Siman]

That effect is best done when you're using photoshop and a PLAIN background. If you use a plain background that is a stark contrast to the animal you're taking the picture of then it works a lot better. For example, for a cham you might want to use black or white or blue (white generally works best for everything).

But if you have a plain backdrop colour you can use photoshop's "Magic Wand Tool" to highlight the background (using a semi-low tolerance of say 30 helps) keeping the Anti-aliased and Contiguous ticked (incase any of the same colour is shown to be on the animal) you can then successfully highlight the background and use the Gradiant tool to put in a gradiant. Or if you don't untick the anti-aliased and contiguous boxes you can highlight all of the image (If for example like the original picture there are two seperated background sections) but this only really works well if you have a background colour that is completely different to the animal.

Sorry if this is a n00bish/non photography persons way of doing it but it works well for me...

[Papscrunt]

amazing pic will have a wee looky at ur dev images

[macro junkie]

i know u can do many things in photoshop..cut them out layer them in different backgrounds..blue ect but im not after that.


im after getting the effect in the link with out having to edit in photo shop..igor was saying in the link theres no editing..its just a piece of carboard painted randomly.he has 1 flash on the background and 1 on the subject.i think im going to try that as i allready have 2 flashes..i can use my mt-24ex to fire my 430ex on slave which is pretty cool..i need a backdrop 1st.i might make one tomorow