A couple of weeks ago we had another photography workshop with the topic of close-up and macro:
On my setup, along with another member, we were experimenting with lighting and back-lighting. Back home, I have subsequently experimented with tone-mapping the images with HDR software, working from both JPG and raw files and also opening the raw file in Photoshop.
The above image is of a blue flower (can anyone identify this for me?) with back-lighting. It was processed within Photoshop directly from the raw file. As it happens, this was the last photo of the day. What was difficult was getting the blue colour right – this, with some adjustment, is the closest I have managed but it is still a bit on the purple side; it should be bluer. For comparison, this is a straight, unedited jpeg version:
Dahlias were also used as a subject:
This was one of a sequence where the lighting was adjusted, mainly by moving a reflector around. It was informative to see the effects that just simple changes made. What was interesting though was when this bright orange dahlia was replaced by a dark red one – it was so dark we had to considerably increase the amount of light on it:
This version has had a little adjustment in Photoshop. What got really interesting though was when we tried back-lighting – all the dust on the lens caused highlights to appear on the dark background which was especially noticeable when tone mapped. But with a little care we did achieve this:
In these final photos, I show the setup used for back-lighting. The flashguns are old hammerhead guns set in manual mode. What doesn’t show is the reflector held just above and to the front of the subject directing some light to illuminate the front. The location was a local village hall hired for the afternoon.
A larger version of the first image can be seen in the Featured Photographs gallery.