A little photoshoot and a little photo editing

[HypoLyf]

I wanted to share a few photos I took today. The end goal for me when it comes to shooting on a white background is to not edit at all like when I take photos on a black background. Until then, I've been learning my way around GIMP (version 2.8.2, basically a free version of Photoshop) to edit the image's background (to make it white) without compromising the animal's appearance. I think I did a pretty good job today.

Here are a few photos.

The first photo is unedited, while the second one is edited.

As always, thanks for looking!

0.1 Fire het Hypo "Candy"



0.1 Fire het Hypo "Queen"



0.1 Hypo "Bonnie"



0.1 Hypo "Medusa"



0.1 Hypo "Ursula"



0.1 Yellow Belly "Hazel"

[DooLittle]

I personally like the unedited versions. Even though the cleaner white looks better for background. I think more people should post unedited photos.

[Mike41793]

I think the editing really makes the hypos pop. I don't see as huge of a difference in the other ones though.

[HypoLyf]

I personally like the unedited versions. Even though the cleaner white looks better for background. I think more people should post unedited photos.

That's why I like the black background. I set it to manual using the settings that I know work, click, download from camera, upload, and done... no editing needed!

I would like to figure out the magical adjustments I'd need to capture the perfect white background (without editing). Before I took these photos in full auto mode, I spent a couple of hours changing just about every setting on the camera, including shutter speed, aperture, setting up a custom white balance, disabling the auto lighting optimizer, changing the metering mode to spot metering, and so on that way I could try and get a white background. I also read up on histograms and checked each photo to make sure they weren't overexposed or underexposed. After doing all of that, I got fed up and just wanted to take my photos.

I think the editing really makes the hypos pop. I don't see as huge of a difference in the other ones though.

That's actually a good thing I think. In editing, I was trying to avoid making them look like glow sticks while getting a nice, clean background.

[HypoLyf]

I can live with these camera settings. I didn't have to edit at all!

[HypoLyf]

And one more... unedited of course! I'm kind of excited!

[DooLittle]

I can live with these camera settings. I didn't have to edit at all!

Wow. Enzo looks great!

[sharkrocket]

Great looking snakes. Breeder like me obviously, because I love orange ghost!!!!

Couple questions:

1. what's your lighting setup? tent or what? I like the shots.

2. can you link me to a tutorial about how to change the background of the picture using gimp? or can you tell me in a brief synopsis?

[HypoLyf]

Great looking snakes. Breeder like me obviously, because I love orange ghost!!!!

Couple questions:

1. what's your lighting setup? tent or what? I like the shots.

2. can you link me to a tutorial about how to change the background of the picture using gimp? or can you tell me in a brief synopsis?

Hypo is kind of awesome!

Here's my setup:


Light tent using five 5000K, 1600 lumen daylight bulbs

I'll just include all of my camera settings as well for the last photos that I didn't edit (hypo enchi and pastel lesser):

Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T2i
Lens: Stock lens (EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens)
Shooting mode: Manual
Shutter speed: 1/60
Aperture: F5.0
ISO: 100
No exposure compensation (left as it was)
No flash exposure compensation (didn't use flash)
User defined white balance (took a photo of the background with tent empty, selected and set for white balance)
Auto lighting optimizer disabled
File Format: RAW+JPEG (just directly uploaded JPEG to facebook)
Metering mode: Spot
Single shooting, auto focus
Picture Style: Standard, tweaked sharpness to 7 to see what would happen

GIMP and a few other helpful photography links that I used today:
http://pareandfocus.com/index.htm/ho...-and-contrast/
http://www.photographingminerals.com...background.php
http://www.photographingminerals.com..._histogram.php
http://photo.stackexchange.com/quest...uct-photgraphy
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Changi...round_Color_1/

[sharkrocket]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that up. I can't wait to read those links and get my own pictures up to par!