Nanci inspired...Back to the Blue (Lagoon)

[HerpsOfNM]

I've been toying around with background ideas lately. I've always been partial the blue as a background, especially for orange/yellow things and particularly when I used to keep leopard geckos. Such a background made albinos and variations of tangerine/hypo tangerine/ Ray Hine-line hypo tangerine (aka hypo tangerine carrot-tail and super hypo tangerine carrot-tail baldy) really pop in color and seemed to yield a fairly accurate representation of the animal itself. I've always been dubious of those that use black or white background (even though I've toyed with them) as those colors tend to be the easiest to manipulate without actually showing colors could be over saturated and/or the photo/subject being "cooked" somehow. Even then photos can be "tweaked" in the right hands of someone that knows their way around photo editing and knows it very well.

For me, a simple setting of the black, gray, and white points within photoshop, a cropping if needed, a resize, and an ever so slight unsharpen mask is all I do. Sometimes I just simply use a gray card or white balance card and then color correct off of that file.

This in mind, I went to Hobby Lobby the other day to check out the various water color papers, poster board, foam core, and matt board options. I settled on 2 choices: 1) a 30 x 40in (I believe) piece of matt board in the color lagoon and 2) a 20 x 30in piece of what appears to be neutral gray foam core. From there, I hit up Home Depot for a piece of 18 x 24in glass. Today I played around with the lagoon matt board. My ultimate goal is to find a means (background) that I can use to truly showcase both accurate color and patterning in white/pink/coral/salmon/peach -ish snakes; all the rest pretty much fall in color wise with setting white balance. I'm pretty pleased with the below results, though I may have to repeat this as the batteries in 1 of 2 remote flashes decided to die.

First up we played with a gray snake...She's in early-stage blue after having just double clutched. A number of girlie worms have doubled for me this year, so I think they may get next year off - it's not about how much you can produce, but rather the quality within how much is produced!


Blush-8-24-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

From there I moved to a couple snakes I don't photograph often enough and to toy around with what orange, red, and yellow yielded result wise.


Candy-8-24-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


CC13-FBSBS-002F-8-24-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

Pleased, then came on these little turds that DID NOT want to hold still. They saw the camera, soft box, and flower pot saucers for posing and then I'm pretty certain both told me, "Ain't got time for that!"

Some pinks/peach on head came through. He's sadly lost a ton of his pink/salmon/coral from when he was half this size

BHB13-CoralSnowMotley-8-24-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


CC16-MPSnT-011-8-24-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

I may be 2 days old, but get closer and see what happens...


CC16-MPSnT-011-8-24-2016-2 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


AND lastly, something for the lady that inspired this little project.


GM2013_01C-8-24-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

 

[jet_set_willy]

Beautiful snakes, the last one is particularly stunning!

 

[Nanci]

So nice...I particularly love the butter stripe. I bought big koi show bowl to try to do photos like this- it was mostly a fail.

 

[DollysMom]

Very nice! That color makes any yellow though orange snakes really pop. They all look good on it and as always your photographs are beautiful.

 

[HerpsOfNM]

Beautiful snakes, the last one is particularly stunning!

Thanks. She has what's shaping up to be an equally awesome boyfriend Extreme Okeetee Tessera coming to age. Even then, he's still one of those "ugly" Roylance snakes.

So nice...I particularly love the butter stripe. I bought big koi show bowl to try to do photos like this- it was mostly a fail.

Thanks, I'm pretty darn pleased with how DelMonte, GM2013_01C, and especially Candy's colors presented here. Candy has been a rather tough one to truly show how vibrant her color is. I almost feel bad pairing her to Moose (my anery tessera), but I wanted to test her genetics out. I think in the near future I need to get a sunglow/sunglow motley from Don for her. Either that or a smoking hot Okeetee.

Was the bowl too reflective, in that the blue was reflecting onto the snakes, throwing their colors off? I had similar happen a few years back when I was using the former blue background. It was just a piece of colored poster board/paper I picked up at Hobby Lobby. The stuff above is matt board, used for creating matt framing within a photo frame. It (the blue coloration) doesn't seem as reflective, but I think that might also be due to the glass I have over top of it. I didn't get near the blue bleed through/reflectance that I had previously. Candy, DelMonte, and your Okeetee girlie (I haven't named her yet, Oatmeal is too Frosty the Snowman) were the tests for said blue bleed through.

Very nice! That color makes any yellow though orange snakes really pop. They all look good on it and as always your photographs are beautiful.

Thanks. I was spying over on your thread about Cleo late last night, thinking she'd (butter motley in general) be another neat one to see how this background worked. All the caramel motleys I've ever seen as adults tend to have this kind of aged greenish-copper color to them and the adult butter motleys seem to start to blend between blotch and background. I think both of those aspects of those morphs could make getting accurate color representation, at least in the eye of the beholder, a tad difficult. Closest I can do for now is butter stripe. The caramel stripe I have is still young and hasn't gotten that greenish look to her yet.

 

[Zombiegirl]

Gorgeous snakes!! Everytime I see a butter it makes me want another one...I had a hatchling years ago that didn't survive and I was so heartbroken. That little snow tessera is too cute!