Quote:
Originally Posted by Texas Star
John-
How'd you rig the stocked pistol for that shot with the bolt open and the sight showing?
All of your photos are exceptional, but that one really takes the cake!
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Thanks for the compliment! That shot took a bit of planning and post-processing.
First, I attached the shoulder stock to the gun with the action open. I placed it in an upright position over some white countertop board, and anchored it in that position with a couple of flower pots (they were all I could find that were heavy on our back porch) on each side of the rear of the stock. I took the shot from a tripod, trying to get good depth of field with a tight aperture. This was natural light in the shade. I took a number of shots, varying the exposure time until the gun looked right against a near-white background. I saved the shot in RAW format so that I could tweak the exposure on the gun and the background.
Then in PhotoShop Elements 10, I increased the contrast, and applied a blanket lavender color to substitute for the white background in the original shot. I cropped it to eliminate the flowerpots holding the back of the stock, and converted the shot to .jpg format. Voila!
I love to experiment with such shots - so much more is possible with digital photography than in the film era. Today, you can't really believe anything you see that was taken with a digital camera, as so many types of manipulation are possible with the right software.
Hope this explains the shot.
John