Thanks to a few new tricks and tips that I learned from my recent workshop with Bryan Peterson, I was able to capture this Image.
I was headed outside thru the sliding glass doors and found this big old wolf spider setting up camp. I thought…hmmm….let’s bring out the 70-200mm and the TC-20e convertor and zoom in and use a who cares aperture of f/11, and bring out the SB-900 speed-light. I set the speed-light at 200mm @ f/11 and dialed in a flash power for a distance of 4 feet, I also set the speed for 1/250 to eliminate the ambient light which was not complementary to the thin web and water. I wanted the look of a black background with silver water droplets.
The first flash attempt did not go well. Then I remembered I was at shooting at 400mm (w/TC-20). I adjusted the distance to eight feet and held the flash at four feet to the left of the spider. I did this successfully several times and Image harvested a number of pictures. I took two images into CS5 and combined them, ran thru Vincent Versace EXDR process and finished the image in B&W based on his recent Kelby video….all along the way, masking the spider so he could be a center of attention
