Still life in the dark

I setup a space in the basement this weekend to try some still life photography. I placed a large sheet of black acrylic felt on a table and tacked it up on the wall also.

Black felt backdrop

The basement is normally lit by the long tube florescent lighting. But they produce more light than I wanted. So I was going to try some of those spiral florescent lights in some small lamps so I could control the angle of the light. But those produce an orangish light. Looks interesting but not what I wanted.

Orange glow from spiral florescent lighting

As it turns out the long tube florescent light produces the whitest light. So I turned them all off except one. The one I left one was on the other side of a partition, so most of its light is blocked. None of its light is direct. The light only came in through a doorway. Looking at the photo of the black felt backdrop setup, the light came in from the left side of the table.

First up is the deer skull I found a few weeks ago. With the light coming in from the side I was able to play with shadowing. The last photo shows the skull using a clamp-on light with the spiral florescent bulb.

Next is a couple of photo's on a possum skull. I hate possum's for some reason. I am glad this one is dead. It was living in my garage.They were all done with a spiral bulb.

Next I tried leaving on one one long tube florescent light that was in front of the backdrop. As you can see not much shadowing.

For the next test I will be making some LED spot lights of different colors. Since they will be spot lights I will be able to control the light better. Hopefully LED's will photograph well. Here is a link to my Flickr page with the rest of the photo's from last night session.