Perfect background?

Thanks, just trying to figure out the do's and don'ts of the snake photo's hehe. I would like them to look professional, but I don't want to do anything that makes it seem like the snake is altered.

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Originally Posted by The Serpent Merchant

no, I'm not saying that it is a bad thing at all, simply a lot of work if you have a lot of pictures to do... Personally I would just get a nice light tent and not have to shop everything.

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Ahhh I gotcha. I can completely understand that. Hopefully when I get to that point I'll have the spare change to get a nice quality light tent :) Until then, it curbs my boredom lol :D

Your pictures are pretty nice. With a proper light tent to diffuse the light and multiple light sources, you can effectively remove the shadows that you're seeing around the snake. That would be the only improvement to your otherwise great pics. =)

You need high burst of light in order to completely smooth out your white background. This can be accomplished with a light tent, but in my experience is easier accomplished with a very high powered flash and a white backing (think glossy paper sheet 3'x2' thats made like photo paper). You can drape this and use it to shoot on and then with the proper exposure and flash control your shots will come out with a clean background. Sometimes you have splotches that have odd light hitting it and you need to adjust it accordingly, however, even that is no more than an exposure brush in Lightroom to touch it up. A lot of my pictures can come straight out of the camera with a creamy white back ground, still some require an exposure brush in order to avoid over exposing the snake in the process. If you can generate enough light however, you can always step your camera down to a deep DOF using a moderate to small aperature like f13. This will allow more details in the snake while still killing the background beautifully. The trick is in the amount of available light. Not always in photoshop ;-)

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Originally Posted by FoxReptiles

Your pictures are pretty nice. With a proper light tent to diffuse the light and multiple light sources, you can effectively remove the shadows that you're seeing around the snake. That would be the only improvement to your otherwise great pics. =)

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Thank you, these were taken outside in the sunlight, just snagged them off my camera to fiddle with. I know about diddly when it comes to photography, was just trying to figure oout a way to give myself a handicap boost lol.

Reptileexperts: I understand about half of that post. I am photography challenged when it comes to the details (always been a point and click user) so bear with me lol thank you!

I built a DIY light box. A big cardboard box, 3 clamp lights with daylight bulbs, some cloth to diffuse the light and white poster board. A light-box is incredibly simple to make and makes us novice photographers looks like we almost know what we're doing. =) There are some good videos on youtube and posts in the DIY section I believe, so I wont go into details here.

Close cropping and background selection is fine as long as you do a good job. The problem is sometimes intent, if you are doing it for your own use it doesn't matter much if you were selling the animals too much photoshop often will turn customers away. I know I look at an image if I see any markers of manipulation I start to suspect colour and brightness of the snake too. I wonder if it is a true representation or not.

I like to use electronic flash no issues with spectrum drop (fluorescent light systems suffer from) and not heat issues of hot lights. The cost of cheap flashes (25-50$ used) can be made up in the cost inexpensive set up. The examples in the DIY I did have not been edited at all. straight off the camera. It is less work in the end. I am fussy about such things as I do work professionally and shoot furniture mostly (BLAAAA) so time in post is time unpaid away from doing things I want to and with over 200 images a week that need to be edited the least amount of photoshop time I do the better.


http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...n-construction

Type of camera you are using will help as well. You really cant make many changes to aperature and ISO or whatever with a $100 digital camera. I am not a photographer either but have been looking into getting a higher end camera to take snake pics that will better represent them. Hoping wife hooks me up for Xmas. ;)

You pictures are nice. I say a good quality light tent, and good quality lights. This will help with do you do not have to do to much post editing.

It's not all about the camera, but a good macro lens will help.


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