boring background - how to pop it ?

pu5z3k · Post by **pu5z3k** » Thu Feb 21, 2019 12:05 pm

Hello,
after a long break, I return to macro photography ...
at the moment, i am grinding skill and technique of doing studio stacks

but my first feelings are that I have quite a boring light ...

and even more boring I have a background .. tell me how you can achieve such a good contrast against the background - a kind of gradient - or smoth fade between the colors

Currently, I light up photos with two flashlamps and two layers of tracing paper

here is some example of my photos:

catchsoul · Post by **catchsoul** » Thu Feb 21, 2019 8:42 pm

Here's my set-up

Gear1 by Nguyen Kelvin, on Flickr

And here's my photostream: https://www.flickr.com/photos/catchsoul/. All native backgrounds (Non-Photoshop retouch).

clarnibass · Post by **clarnibass** » Fri Feb 22, 2019 11:17 pm

First, amazing how clean his/her eye is

I'm working with an especially well kept collection right now and very few of the bugs are in such excellent condition...even after my best efforts at cleaning!

The lighting on the fly(?) seems good.

Re the background, is it the paper with some tape(?) on it? Since DOF is so small, even a relatively close background is very blurry. Play with the distance and texture of the background if you want it to not be just a pretty smooth colour. Maybe glue something (dirt, glitter, whatever) to a paper. Or just draw different shapes and colours with sharpies, etc. and play with the distance to see what it looks like.
You can experiment with just the background first, then add the bug.

I'm not sure how you stack, but see those transparent hairs and some small halos? If you use Zerene, they have an excellent tutorial on their website on how to deal with that. If it's another software, maybe they have good ways to fix it too (I've heard Helicon is good, not sure about Photoshop).

Deanimator · Post by **Deanimator** » Sat Feb 23, 2019 6:40 pm

The image itself is excellent. I've rarely come even close.
If your actual concern is the drabness of the background, light the background separately.

I'm currently taking a break from macrophotography, and devoting some time to still life.

I've done a lot of reading recently on still life technique, and one of the common techniques for bringing backgrounds to life is to specifically light the background as an element in its own right. You could use either continuous light or a flash to do this.

I suggest that you watch a few videos on still life and product photography for some ideas.