Critique Philoscia muscorum

[TimmyG]

I'm still trying to perfect my diffuser for the more compact setup I am experiment with, and the lighting on this one came out far too harsh. I did like the nice pose this woodlouse got himself into so I thought I would try and "rescue" it by bombarding it with layers n Photoshop. As every good photographer knows you don't really need to worry too much about getting your lighting right in camera as you can always correct it in post

Not sure how successful I was, but I did learn a new trick to remove colour banding caused by gradient masks. If you add a layer of noise to the gradient (around 2% with uniform distribution and uncheck the monochrome option) it will smooth the effect more (I was suffering from these "posterisation" artifacts quite badly when adding the vignettes). If you are getting banding without using gradients you can add a new layer, fill it with grey, set the blend mode to "overlay" and add noise in a similar way..

Anyway, I think I got quite an "arty" result. A lot more processing than I would usually do and I think I lose a lot of clarity as a result. What do you think? One for the bedroom wall?

Common Shiny Woodlouse by Tim.Garlick, on Flickr

 

[Tintin124]

From the way you have processed I wouldn't say you have an issue with lighting any chance we could see the original.

From the shot of your setup id be tempted to put the foam like I have loosely taped to the flash head as it is very oddly shaped currently. If you want a concave shape maybe a straw could hold the whole thing in the right position. Just some ideas for you.

 

[T0p cat]

The picture has a soft almost like a painting feel to it which suits the unusually cute looking louse. All of the brown tones work for me as well. The bit sticking up behind it is slightly distracting but apart from that it works for me.

 

[LCPete]

Really like that Tim great composition but the light and the vignette effect if that was intended looks fantastic

 

[TimmyG]

From the way you have processed I wouldn't say you have an issue with lighting any chance we could see the original.

well usually I wouldn't but seeing as it's you This is from one of the images in the 3 shot stack:

From the shot of your setup id be tempted to put the foam like I have loosely taped to the flash head as it is very oddly shaped currently. If you want a concave shape maybe a straw could hold the whole thing in the right position.
Just some ideas for you.

Thanks, yeah I'm not sure about the foam option. I don't think it would increase the surface area significantly but it would block a lot of the light. I think I need a way of "boxing" in the flash head so I can direct all the light back onto the concave surface and improve efficiency. The straw idea sounds interesting though, I might be able to do something with that...
Cheers Bryn!

The picture has a soft almost like a painting feel to it which suits the unusually cute looking louse. All of the brown tones work for me as well. The bit sticking up behind it is slightly distracting but apart from that it works for me.

Thanks, yeah that was kind of the look I settled for Agree about the the bit sticking up behind. I couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be part of the woodlouse, so left it in in the end. Should be easy enough to clone out though.
Thanks!

Really like that Tim great composition but the light and the vignette effect if that was intended looks fantastic

Cheers Pete. Yeah I wouldn't usually go for such a heavy vignette, I was just playing really, but I think it works alright with the final style.

Thanks all! By the way, I've been corrected on the ID. It's a Common Striped Woodlouse, not a Common Shiny Woodlouse! Silly me