Re: Macro Fly Photography - A Process
Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 7:15 am
I vote for the "wood"; it compliments the colors of the fly but is enough darker that it provides contrast.
A forum to discuss tying and fishing wingless wet flies and other soft hackle fly patterns
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Heya mate,
I'm loving this thread buddy, great to see you really getting into your photography, your images are looking great and coming along nicely. This last fly is simply gorgeous, me like. The tin can looks interesting and I love the monochromatic texture it brings to the image.
When considering composition a good approach is to create a main focal point and after deciding on an angle for the fly including depth of field considering the rest of the composition. When you introduce backgrounds and shapes like the round top of the tin your photos would look better if the proportions looked more intentional and sure (I hope that makes sense). The crescent created by the tin is a bit small and a negative space (not a bad thing if incorporated well), it would benefit from being more prominent a dissection of the image and if it wasn't as uniform/more dynamic. Maybe the left point of the tin being closer to the bottom left of the frame and the top right portion of the tin ending exactly in the top right corner. At the moment the proportional semicircle at the top intersecting the top of the hackle looks too unintentional and draws your eye to this point. The colour experimentation is interesting but some of the colours although sympathetic to the hues of the fly look a bit dirty and detract from the subject and the already beautiful contrast in textures/materials between the tin and the fly. The image that works best is the most intentional and confident one, the third from the top with the black background. It's hard to put this into writing but I hope it makes sense. I reckon this image could be an absolute cracker if you tweaked it a bit, also play with the lighting, some shadows might be nice, you may lose some detail but have a more arty photo. Keep up the great work mate, I'm enjoying this thread immensely. Although it's far from perfect, here's a quick butchered version of what I'm getting at with my comments above, bearing in mind that the perspective hasn't changed. Gotta go for now, look forward to seeing more.
Your friend
Karsten