I was still feeling the effects of a bout of ‘flu yesterday, but after watching Andreas Feiningers Video on Youtube, I fancied having a go at a similar macro type shot.

If you’d like to recreate the look too, you’ll need an old baking tray, some sand (or pebbles), something to brush the sand, a subject (in my case a piece of potpourri), a printed out back-drop (it’s a strange colour in my set because my printer was running out of ink) and a tripod:

I used my camera in macro mode, with a large aperture (f3.5) to reduce the depth of field – I specifically wanted the background out of focus. I wasn’t worried about the white-balance because I knew I’d be converting to black and white.

In Photoshop Elements I stripped out the colour, played with the levels, then applied a Gaussian blur to the foreground and background, masking out the subject.

Next time I’ll try and get more texture into the sand, try a different background, and play around with light more.

Here’s my first go:

Cheers, Rob.