When taking photos, the source of your light makes all the difference. Today, I have a dramatic example to illustrate this fact.

I took these photos for an exercise for a photography class. The assignment had nothing to do with lighting, but as I was playing around with this subject, I figured I'd try some different things. The shell is pretty thin walled, so I took one shot with the light source just the lights in our light tent, then took another with a small LED light illuminating the inside of the shell.

The results are kind of interesting.

Internal lighting for 5.2 seconds	Regular lighting for 1/4 second

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 5.2 and 1/4 sec respectively at f/18.2. ISO 200.

Same exact subject, just slightly different settings and different lighting - it is amazing what little changes can make to a photograph. Which means you have to be able to visualize those kinds of things to be able to produce multiple images when given certain situations.

- Bill