My water buffalo

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Didn't want to pollute Brian's thread of his wood carving macro, but did want to show what my full piece looked like. I've had this around from the mid-60's, a gift from my Grandmother after one of her trips.



ISO 64, 10 sec @f11, all natural lighting from the front window (it's a very grey day outside) 55mm macro lens.

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, would look much better with a less pronounced background.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Unfortunately all the backgrounds I could come up with inside the house were distracting. Maybe if I'd shot at f8 the DoF would have blurred it a little more than it isn't in this shot.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Alan,

Unfortunately all the backgrounds I could come up with inside the house were distracting. Maybe if I'd shot at f8 the DoF would have blurred it a little more than it isn't in this shot.

I don't know how ingenious you can be, but here are a few thoughts ...

You need to get the subject as far as possible away from the background.

Also try to prevent the window light falling on to the background, e.g. by placing something between them to cast a shadow on bg, but not subject. (perhaps a dark item of clothing thrown over the back of a chair and then position that as appropriately as possible)

I think you could also try standing a bit of bright paper/cardboard to the right of camera to reflect some window light back in to the shadows.

Hope those thoughts help and may be encourage a bit of trial and error.

Cheers, Dave

[JBW]

Didn't want to pollute Brian's thread of his wood carving macro, but did want to show what my full piece looked like. I've had this around from the mid-60's, a gift from my Grandmother after one of her trips.



ISO 64, 10 sec @f11, all natural lighting from the front window (it's a very grey day outside) 55mm macro lens.

It takes a lot to pollute one of my threads. For what it's worth I used a piece of white cardboard for my background and then tinted the bg.

[Mike Buckley]

The position of the subject relative to the camera is really nice. The colors in the subject other than the glare are rich but natural and do an excellent job of defining the shape of the subject.

A polarizer probably wouldn't have eliminated all of the glare but you could have used it to eliminate the most unwanted glare.

Another method of lighting the subject with natural light to approximate the style you chose is to prevent outside light from falling directly on the subject and instead using a reflector to light it.

Agreed with comments already made about the tabletop and background. Changing the depth of field wouldn't have made enough difference on its own. Other choices include changing the placement of the subject relative to the background by eliminating the folds in the fabric from "growing" out of the subject's head. The strong, distracting shadow on the far right side of the tabletop could have been eliminated by moving the subject and camera to the left to avoid including that shadow in the scene. Alternatively, you could have propped up the fabric on the right side to prevent the shadow from occurring.

The color of the background and tabletop doesn't work for me. If you don't have some material with a more complementary color, consider changing the color during post-processing.

[Wavelength]

Liked it much

[IzzieK]

Very nice capture, Alan, just need a bit of work to show its beauty..