Bones. Still Life on a Budget.

I have to admit it.  I like to collect skulls and antlers when I walk in the woods.  I find them pretty fascinating and over the years I've gotten quite a collection.

I have bovine skulls, coyote skulls, 'possum, raccoon, and many deer skulls.
All of these bones and skulls have been discovered while hiking.

For my group on Fine Art Black and White photography, our assignment this week was on point of view or Depth of Focus.
I'd submitted a deer trail photo, then decided after seeing some 'still life' shots from other photographers that I'd try something inside.

[Good idea because it has been terribly cold here with wind chills in the -20's and below during the day.  Not fun for a photographer and pretty rough on the equipment too.]

I'd seen some beautiful perfume bottles, flowers, and other macro work.  But I am not a person who collects or has those things.

So I went out to my 'skull pile' and picked out some intact pieces to work with.

In the above shot, the left skull is raccoon, the middle is canine of some sort, and I am not sure what the right one is.  Possibly a 'possum.

This was a great experiment with my Nikkor 40mm Micro/Macro lens and the Dolica TX570 tripod.

I used a piece of black velvet and my old wooden chair to set the items on.

See?  You don't need an expensive set up to do some creative still life.  There is the brick wall, the beat up chair, the wrinkled black velvet and Morris's crate all in the way.

Yet I was able to work around this set up and create these shots.

I used natural lighting that came in from the window.

I plan on trying to do some shots like this tonight and use another skull or two from my collection, but use an LED flashlight and a desktop lamp to see what I can do with 'creative' household lighting.

So being a 'bone collector' finally had some benefits.