This next tip is about using a smart phone for improved photos of your master pieces. Today’s smart phones, which are remarkable pieces of equipment, enable anyone to be a good photographer! Having said that, here are a couple of ways to improve your pictures of the flies you tie.
A Suggestion – Purchase a vblog (aka vlog- video log) light, ranging in price from $10 to $100+. They make life easier to capture great pics. Here is my reasoning.
Photography is nothing more than managing light. (There is a little more than that; but, in simplest terms, if you control the light you will take great photos.) In an effort to control this light, before I started to use a blog light, I had to:
Work at developing an optimum light condition.
Move my vise to “stage” the photo.
Make sure the camera, light and subject matter were in predetermined positions (#1 above).
Then, move the vise to my fly tying table- if I were doing a step by step series on tying a particular fly.
Above is my “stage”. Please note there are a lot of parts to this: a background, a light source, reflectors on the right and left of the fly to control shadows and brighten the subject, mirrors underneath the provide some backlighting.
My setup for using a vblog light.
All I do is put the blog light in front of my vise and take a picture. The light source is in a ring configuration, providing a fairly even illumination of the subject. It takes about 1 minute to take a picture. The vblog light helps the camera to optimize the setting before taking a picture.
The image of the left was taken with a vblog light source while the one on the right was taken with “my stage” setup. Both photos received the same editing process. There was minimal software editing on both pictures. You can certainly spend time on editing the picture on the left. ( I was never able to get it to be as clear or as sharp as the blog light pic)