Screen Shots

When Bob Hall sent me an email asking for my tut on Screen Shot Red Rover, I turned to my sister and said "I don’t have any ancient Egyptian monarchs that I know of. What could he mean?" After wacking me in the back of the head she said "Tutorial, moron!". So here we go.

The first screen shot I did in 2003 was very rudimentary. ‘Screen Shot Gerbera’ was with one naked light shining on the flower, 7x of close up filters and a one foot wide piece of screen hanging down from my printer above my computer in front of a piece of white poster board.

Red Rover was shot using the shooting set up below. White form board in the background and on the shooting surface. Two Panoflex Lite Discs, one each on either side of the shooting surface. Each light discs shields a clamp lamp with a 100 watt halogen bulb and on the right side another a desk lamp is above the clamp lamp with the light pointing down. The screen is still connected at the top to the tray of my printer. At the bottom it is connected to a white surfaced box top. The one foot wide piece of screen is the same one from 2003 and is connected at top and bottom with office clips. Inside the box is a weight that holds the box top in place.

As you can see the flowers are set behind the screen. Positioning is important but it is done after the water is applied to the screen. Of course without the water, you really do not get anything of interest.

Water is applied to the screen with a spray bottle set more on a mist type of spray rather than a stream. A stream would shoot the water right through the screen. Misting has a better possibility of landing on the screen surface. I hold a some paper towels behind the screen as I spray water on the screen in a small area in front of the flower.

I have always gone for a variety of water surfaces in the screen shots. Convex drops, those with the drop curved towards the camera, give a truer reflection of the flower(s). Concave, those with the drop curved away from the camera, give the more distorted reflections. The combination gives more interest to the image as do drops that cover more than one square of screen and drops that are in squares next to others, either above, below or diagonally. The flowers can be repositioned at this point, if necessary, to give optimal reflections.

The camera is mounted on a tripod with the front two legs lowered to get in as close as possible to the screen. On the camera are 10x, 4x, 2x and 1x close up filters, or a combination of 17x (in this example...I am fairly certain I only used the 10x close up filter for ‘Screen Shot Red Rover’). The camera is set in macro mode. I move the camera from area to area of the screen to get what I think are the best combination of reflections in the frame. The following image is of one such shot and is resized with USM, only.

The picture is then processed. I did layer adjustments for levels, brightness and contrast, hue and saturation USM. Straightening of the screen is done with a combination of distortion and pin cushion distortion adjustments. Cropped , resized, USM.

That’s about it. If you have any questions, please contact me at rcmannjr@msn.com . And may the luck of the drop be with you.