At first glance these two photos may seem the same. They are similar to the picture I posted the other day but I used flash on that one. I took these two yesterday in front of the window with no flash, just natural light. What I wanted to show is the difference using fill light can make, the top photo was taken without it. In the bottom photo I added fill light, it really brightens things up. I probably could've taken the top photo and tweaked it in Photoshop using the dodge and burn tool to make it look like the bottom photo but you're better off getting a decent picture straight from the camera rather that spending all kinds of time on the computer trying to make an inferior photo look good. The fill light really brightened the pistol and stamens and even the stem underneathe the tulip.
The fill light I use is just a crumpled piece of aluminum foil flattened back out and taped to a piece of cardboard. I do a lot of macro photography and I've been using that for years. I used it in the butterfly photos I posted on Monday and if you check out the pussywillow pictures from Friday you can tell I used it there too. Although most of the fill light on the pussywillow photos was the snow on the ground reflecting light back up onto them. This goes to show not all equipment that helps improve your photography has to be expensive and something as simple as crumpled aluminum foil can help your photos look better.
4 comments:
Beautiful! An excellent demonstration, John. It pays to be creative sometimes. :)
John, Unfortunately there are some of us that just read this and still don't understand it :-) Are you an engineer by any chance? You talk like my husband :-)
Thanks for the info. I will try this on my next flowers photos. Don't think it will work on the animals though LOL I can just picture me running through the woods with a camera in one hand and a big piece of tinfoil in the other..LOL (Ok I am sick! maybe I didn't get enough sleep) It really is good advice, and I really will try it when the flowers bloom here..Thanks
John, I can´t tell you about the explosion of color in my monitor when I clicked on this picture... Thanks
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