How Would You Light This?

A plume moth has taken up residence about 6 inches from the bottom of the white dining room door. It would have been rude to ignore it, so the camera came out. The result is below. But the shadows.... I angled a couple of small LED lights to try to hide as much of the shadow as possible. It sort of worked for the wings, not quite for the body and not at all for the front legs.




So how would you have handled the lighting and shadows?

Available lights are some small LEDs, an LED panel light, the AF160 ring flash and a Godox TT350 that can be triggered off-camera. And nothing that might harm the moth, please, it's definitely alive and according to my moth book it will have come into the house to hibernate.

Steve

Tricky. How about bouncing light off the ceiling and walls to get a diffuse light?

Since it isn't moving, why not use that nice geared head and do a timed exposure using natural light? I hate flash and I avoid it like the plague. ('cos it's fiddly and I don't understand it).

I am with David on that one but throw in a couple of reflectors for additional light

Thanks folks, some interesting suggestions. The moth seems to have settled down for a long stay (although Mrs L. has other ideas) so I might have another go tomorrow. Too busy with a bonfire today !

Ambient light - possibly, but the room is never brightly lit even on a sunny day and the door is in a dim corner.

Reflected off walls and ceiling - doubtful, the door has a cream wall to the right and the side of a brown cupboard to the left, difficult to get enough reflected light to the moth.

Reflector - Definitely a possibility. Perhaps some experimenting first with a dummy moth on an easier bit of wall... (Mrs L. already thinks I'm a bit mad, so it will probably look like normal behaviour to her).

Long exposure - The moth actually does move. Not much, just a tiny twitch of a wing once in a while, can't see it from afar but definitely visible through a viewfinder at near 1:1. The picture is a stack of 6, each 1/3 sec @ f8, ISO 400. A wing was twitched in at least one of the 6.

Geared head - the thought did cross my mind, but it doesn't help with the shadows...

Here's the moth and door in its wider context, taken in daylight. A good place to hibernate, perhaps, but not for a portrait. Does it stimulate any more thoughts?




Steve

I wonder whether a long exposure with the flash being manually discharged at a various points around the moth - painting with flash, might work. Possibly place something light in colour on the floor. The process would be a bit hit and miss, but might be worth trying with a dummy moth to start with. As a last resort, clone out the shadow with Photoshop???

It took ages to clone out the dust and imperfections in the paint (having a dog doesn't help with the dust ). Life's too short do it to the shadows too!

Steve

Shoot the flash through a large sheet of white paper situated about half way between the flash and the moth while the flash is about a meter and a half to two meters from the subject at about a 45 degrees angle. Instant difffser.

Your going to need soft light for this. So the answer has to be diffused light with the flash off camera and a bounce reflector card..

Thanks. I've just been trying it out with an artificial moth (i.e. made from brown paper) on a door that's well out of the way of Mrs L. Diffuser is thin polystyrene - a random bit of packaging kept because it looked like it might be useful one day. The good news it that it definitely softens the shadows. The bad news is that for the real moth there isn't anything like a metre and a half at 45 degrees on either side before a wall or cupboard gets in the way.

But it's got a train of thought running... polystyrene reflector on floor by door to bounce light upwards, flash in middle of dining room at top of door height, polystyrene diffuser half-way between flash and moth, ad-hoc contraptions to hold flash and diffuser... probably best done when Mrs L. is otherwise occupied... .

Just got to hope that the moth is still there when it's time to do the photo shoot.

Steve

A more practical approach than my clone out the shadows idea, would be an open ended lightbox, which can be made from a cardboard box with windows cut out and covered with tracing paper or similar, add some reflective material to the inside and light from outside. Carefully place over the moth and shoot away

Michael

Done it! The result is now in a new thread in Your Photos. I eventually did what Pentaxian450 suggested (flash a couple of metres away at 45 degrees + diffuser) and also added a white board on the floor to reflect white light upwards rather than brown light from the carpet. The moth, meanwhile, had moved down to about a inch above the bottom of the door, surrounded by dust, marks and imperfections in the paint surface, all of which contributed to a mammoth "clone 'em out" session yesterday evening.

The idea of an open ended lightbox is interesting. It's too late for this moth, which has now moved on, but a collapsible version (for easy storage) is now on the list of winter projects.

So thanks to all for your suggestions. It's been fun doing something outside my normal comfort zone.

Steve