If you’ve been following me at all, you know I get on these little kicks. Plastic bags, eggs, mustard, salamanders (it’s the season for them), and now mustard and a salamander. And you also know that I enjoy making composite images.
Note: the salamander was not hurt or even upset by this little photo shoot. I want to put that out there straight away.
This was really straightforward, actually. The lighting was dead simple, similar to any basic product shot I might make: white background, even and soft lighting from a big overhead softbox, and any nasty shadows filled in with a reflector or two. The hardest part was trying to get the remnants of the label off the mustard container (which never came off completely, and had to be dealt with in post).
And then it was just a matter of making four shots: 1) my hand holding the mustard container, 2), the stream of mustard from the container, 3) the stream of mustard that appears to be on the salamander, and, 4) my left hand holding a hotdog bun with the salamander actually in it.
That last bit, with the live (and quite wiggly) amphibian took all of about two minutes, and then back he went inside the cooler filled with damp leaves to join his pals. After the shoot, back to the vernal pool they all went to happily procreate.
The composite was almost boringly easy as well, since everything was lighted and exposed the same.
Here’s the big Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 35mm f/2.8 Marco at f/9, ISO 100, 1/16th of a second, lighting as described above, 4-shot composite
