This is a band tussock moth caterpillar I found in my backyard in middle Tennessee. I photographed it with a 50mm macro lens and a ring flash. My settings were 1/160, f/32, and 200 ISO. When using flash, if the background is not close to the subject, it becomes black. Light falloff is governed by the Inverse Square Law which states that light emanating from a single source is reduced in intensity four times when the distance is only doubled. Therefore, to avoid a dark background, I placed a print of out of focus foliage, mounted on foam core so it was flat, behind the caterpillar. The ring flash illuminated the print, so it wasn’t dark, and using a small lens aperture didn’t affect the shallow depth of field on the background.
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