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- May 14, 2004
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- 3,088
i thought that this would be a good idea as more of us are getting more and more and more beautiful species that require beautiful photographs.
Even though macro photography can be a royal pain in the butt, it's worth every bit of stress and trouble. The great thing about it is that you can create realistic natural settings without a jungle, or a desert, etc. For this demo, i decided to photograph T. serrulatus.
1. get a spot of floor or counter clear. you want an open space in case your bug tries to bolt on ya.
2.Choose a base upon which you will build your set. this can be a log, some dirt, a rock, anything. in this case i decided to use a strip of cork bark.
3. Now is when you start building up on your base. To do this, i first took a clump of terrarium moss...
and then spread it out over the top of the bark, making it look as if it has moss growing on it. I also reccomend misting the moss to make it look more realistic and spongy.
4. Now, for the top layer. To create the sense of a forest floor, grab some dead leaves. My personal favorites are the exotic looking magnolia leaves...
Now just like before, you arange the leaves on/around your base in the most appealing and natural way you can find. I reccomend another light misting at this point as the droplets will collect on the leaves giving the sense of a fresh rain, morning dew, or just a humid environment.
5. now comes possibly the most important part, the lighting. Macro photography requires a great deal of light, and the wrong light can wash out your pic, give it a yellow tint, or just be too dim. I typically use a standard desk lamp as a spot, and since in my opinion the best light is natural sunlight, i use a bulb that uses both UVA and UVB rays to simulate this.
6. The position of the light is also important to the process. placing the light directly overhead can wash out the picture or make it seem phony. The trick is place the light in such a way that you have natural shadows. it often helps to have the light shining ACROSS the set, rather than shining on it. Notice in the pic how the light highlights certain areas but also casts natural shadows. A flat, uniform lighting can kill a picture's authenticity.
7. Now is the time to add the scorpion.
8. When shooting the scorpion, avoid using the zoom on your camera as much as you can, instead try and get your camera as close as possible(remembering to keep your flash off). Not only does the zoom not work terribly reliably in macro, but by shooting the scorpion up close, you create bold depths of feild and other focusing tricks unattainable while zooming. Also, dont point-and-shoot, or just take birds-eye-view shots. Get down on level with the scorpion, play around with different angles, and lightings. Take many many pictures. you can always delete extras, but you might not be able to reproduce the same pic again.
9. the final step is to polish up your photo. When you upload it onto a computer, you can enhance the picture by adjusting the brightness, contrast, and gamma exposure, which can be done in almost any photo-editing program. Dont worry, this is not considered to be altering the photo, as you are only tweaking things, not changing them, and you are adjusting nothing that a photographer in a darkroom couldn't.
Congratulations! that's it! Hopefully your end product will be something you can be proud of. You can use this method to create any kind of habbitat. Good luck! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I also wouldn't mind seeing your results after using this tutorial.
Cheers,
John
Even though macro photography can be a royal pain in the butt, it's worth every bit of stress and trouble. The great thing about it is that you can create realistic natural settings without a jungle, or a desert, etc. For this demo, i decided to photograph T. serrulatus.
1. get a spot of floor or counter clear. you want an open space in case your bug tries to bolt on ya.
2.Choose a base upon which you will build your set. this can be a log, some dirt, a rock, anything. in this case i decided to use a strip of cork bark.
3. Now is when you start building up on your base. To do this, i first took a clump of terrarium moss...
and then spread it out over the top of the bark, making it look as if it has moss growing on it. I also reccomend misting the moss to make it look more realistic and spongy.
4. Now, for the top layer. To create the sense of a forest floor, grab some dead leaves. My personal favorites are the exotic looking magnolia leaves...
Now just like before, you arange the leaves on/around your base in the most appealing and natural way you can find. I reccomend another light misting at this point as the droplets will collect on the leaves giving the sense of a fresh rain, morning dew, or just a humid environment.
5. now comes possibly the most important part, the lighting. Macro photography requires a great deal of light, and the wrong light can wash out your pic, give it a yellow tint, or just be too dim. I typically use a standard desk lamp as a spot, and since in my opinion the best light is natural sunlight, i use a bulb that uses both UVA and UVB rays to simulate this.
6. The position of the light is also important to the process. placing the light directly overhead can wash out the picture or make it seem phony. The trick is place the light in such a way that you have natural shadows. it often helps to have the light shining ACROSS the set, rather than shining on it. Notice in the pic how the light highlights certain areas but also casts natural shadows. A flat, uniform lighting can kill a picture's authenticity.
7. Now is the time to add the scorpion.
8. When shooting the scorpion, avoid using the zoom on your camera as much as you can, instead try and get your camera as close as possible(remembering to keep your flash off). Not only does the zoom not work terribly reliably in macro, but by shooting the scorpion up close, you create bold depths of feild and other focusing tricks unattainable while zooming. Also, dont point-and-shoot, or just take birds-eye-view shots. Get down on level with the scorpion, play around with different angles, and lightings. Take many many pictures. you can always delete extras, but you might not be able to reproduce the same pic again.
9. the final step is to polish up your photo. When you upload it onto a computer, you can enhance the picture by adjusting the brightness, contrast, and gamma exposure, which can be done in almost any photo-editing program. Dont worry, this is not considered to be altering the photo, as you are only tweaking things, not changing them, and you are adjusting nothing that a photographer in a darkroom couldn't.
Congratulations! that's it! Hopefully your end product will be something you can be proud of. You can use this method to create any kind of habbitat. Good luck! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I also wouldn't mind seeing your results after using this tutorial.
Cheers,
John
:wall: 
