Black backgrounds in macro photography?

awild — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:42:29 +0000

Dalantech over at the No Cropping Zone writes:

From time to time I see people argue about the backgrounds in macro images, and about how dark backgrounds donât look natural âwhatever the heck that means. Seriously whatâs natural about macro photography? Do you see all the detail in a beeâs compound eye or the tiny âhairsâ that cover most leaves without the aid of some sort of magnifier?

I think Dalantech is entirely correct in that arguments about the naturalness of black backdrops are unconvincing.Â There are many reasons to take photographs, and capturing an animal in a particular environment is only one of them.

Having said that, though, I've never been overly fond of the black background, even though I use it occasionally as a compositional device.Â Black is in some respects a default setting for macro.Â If you use a flash pointed away from the backdrop and a fast shutter speed, the background will fade to black as a matter of course.Â Consequently, there are piles of black-backdrop macros floating around.Â Sort of like turtlenecks at an art museum.Â Enough to border on the monotonous.

Since black can be produced by accident, lots of those black background photos are themselves accidental, snapped without any attempt at composition.Â They're just more bad bug-on-a-flower-shots.Â And as I get sick of seeing them, I go off black backgrounds generally.Â Guilt by association.

Of course, my opinion is deeply unfair.Â Dalantech's photos are carefully composed and really superb.Â Black is part of his distinctive style, and no one would argue that he's just another guy taking happy snaps of bugs-on-flowers.Â Maybe I'm just a big fan of white.Â Which never ever gets monotonous, no?

awild Thu, 01/22/2009 - 03:42

Getting the backdrop right: an example

awild — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:26:52 +0000

Getting the backdrop right: an example

This basic photo of a harvester ant carrying a seed took an hour and a half to capture. 150 exposures. The problem wasn't that the ants weren't behaving, but that it took nearly an hour of experimentation to get the simplicity of composition I had envisioned when I set out on the project.

Few of my better photos are one-off shots.

Most exist in my head in some form or another before I attempt to shoot them, and once I've started a session they take a bit of experimentation before finding the right conditions.Â Yesterday I headed up towards Mt. Lemmon where I knew of several nests of the photogenic Pogonomyrmex barbatus, with the thought of capturing a simple, representative image of the species engaged in characteristic seed-gathering behavior. The first stop was an active nest on a patch of red-yellow soil. I spent 45 minutes lining up decent, in-focus shots but without producing anything with any kind of zing. After looking through the lackluster results, I realized that the background sand at the nest was too close in color to the ants. Here's a sample:

A red ant on reddish soil blends in when I need it to stand out. (Also, at this angle the seed tends to get lost in the texture of the background...) So I packed up and went down the trail, and where the soil changed to a whiter color I found a second colony. A more neutral background provided a better contrast, but this nest was busier. Not only was I getting stung, but I was having trouble isolating a single seed-carrying ant in the frame:

Eventually I found a single-file trail over an open patch of soil. However, here the background challenge was not color but texture. In several spots the sand gave way to gravel. A gravel backdrop is busy and distracting, making it especially difficult to see the seed:

Compare that shot with the winning one, captured where the ants' trail crossed finer-grained sand:

See the difference?

awild Sun, 05/25/2008 - 12:26