Back-Lit Spider Web

On a recent trip to California's Central coast, the warm days and cool nites created lots of early morning dew. The condensation on flowers and other foliage can really provide some great subjects for macro work.

Dew filled mornings usually mean overcast skies...at least for awhile. This type of soft light is great for water drops on Poppies, and blades of grass....but, not the ultimate in spider web illumination. For these "suspended-in-mid-air" droplets, there's nothing better than a good, strong backlight. And that definitely wasn't happening this morning.

Without the added contrast and snap of some strong, directional light, this spider web would be pretty mundane. But, luckily, one of the advantages of working in-close with macro gear is that if changes need to be made in the contrast levels or direction of the main light source, it's pretty easy. The "live" area is SO small that it's a cinch to make a modification of the entire scene....sometimes with a small reflector or, in this case, by adding an off-camera flash unit to add the needed punch.

Recent developments in wireless TTL flash accuracy have really made this pretty simple.



In this case I was able to hand-hold the Metz unit behind the web, and direct the light through the backside of the very small scene. And by using the flash-compensation feature on the camera, nailing the exact exposure was easy.





The background brightness levels were modified by changing the shutter speeds to control the amount of ambient light that was recorded. Shorter shutter speeds resulted in a darker background....without affecting the flash exposure on the drops. It's exactly the same technique used for flash-filled portraits.