Gerald The Dinosaur ...

For the current Sunday Challenge, which had the theme of high key ... meet Gerald The Dinosaur, not so much T-Rex as Teeny-Rex.

I only intended to use him for a bit of fun after the end of the main shoot, but in the end I wasn't really happy with any of the shots I'd taken of my intended subject. So I'm posting this one of Gerald, albeit somewhat later than intended, rather than miss the challenge altogether.

I'd read that it was difficult to do high key shots inside, but as the weather has been pretty miserable on and off, I elected not to shoot outdoors. I thought that by using a white card background and some daylight lamps I'd be able to pull the effect off ... how wrong I was.

No matter what I did the creamy white object I was trying to shoot was either over exposed and blown around its edges or, if I got it captured cleanly, then the background was off-white going on for grey. I'm guessing then that you either need some studio lights, even rather basic ones, or this technique is best tackled outside in bright sunshine.

Sorry if I sound negative folks, but I've not enjoyed this challenge one little bit and unless I can get some decent lights I don't think I'll be trying it again in a hurry.

In the end this was the best I could get and even then I had to do some processing to get the pure white background.