Fly Photography Light Station

By Kyle Hand

We all enjoy taking pictures of our fur, feather and hook creations. Some of you are pretty good. I on the other hand, have been hit and miss with my pictures. I was getting tired of seeing everybody else?s pictures, clear and concise, gracing the pages of magazines and websites.

Now, I have taken a million pictures in my lifetime, some good and a lot of them really bad. I thought maybe it was my camera so I went out and bought a new digital camera. I told Susie it would take real nice pictures of Mia, our granddaughter (it does) but the real method to my madness was to get some real nice pictures of my flies. You know the feeling, where it does not really matter what the fly looks like, I am going to take a damn picture of the SOB and somebody will show it on their site. My mission led me to purchase a Fuji S3000 FinePix digital camera, 3.2 Mega pixels with a 6X Optical zoom. Not the nicest camera out there, but still very nice and practical.

As I have found out, that only led further to my frustration as there are too many options. Every time I think I get it dialed in, I get some kind of funky picture that irritates the hell out of me. I usually ended up sending my pictures to John and he would clean them up and put them on his page.

I think I have found a solution to this problem.

Click on the thumbnails below to see a larger image:



I built my own little picture taking station. Pretty darn proud of it too. I looked at some different articles by Michael Radencich and Al Campbell on taking pictures of flies and the setups they use. I talked to a couple of friends who have websites and picked their brains, and my mechanical guru Gary Armitage, and came up with the following device. The really nice thing is it cost me under $30 for everything. It is light weight and can be moved around, yet mine is semi-stationary. You probably have a bunch of this stuff around your house now so it might not cost you much at all.

The basic frame is made out of 1-inch PVC pipe. I bought a few elbows and adaptor plugs to turn each corner into a three-way connection and built an 18-inch cube. I will probably get a couple of T-brackets and put another piece of PVC across the middle of the top, not for stability, but for another place to move lights around. The entire frame sits on the top of a folding table with about an inch to spare on the end. I did not glue it together so it will be very simple to tear down and move when and if I decide to do so.

The lighting I use is very simple. I use heat lamp cones (brooder lights) with GE Reveal 100W bulbs, which helps with the yellowing (read that in an article, have no arguments yet) and I get lots nicer pictures to send along. These lights come with clamps and all I do is clamp them to the PVC at different locations and aim them where I want them and start snapping away.

The back of the set up is equally as easy. I went to the local Hobby Lobby and Michael?s and bought colored foam board to use for the background. Very easy to change out, simply put one in front of the other. I actually put these behind the frame and they sit on top of the table. In back of the colored foam board I put a piece of the thinnest plywood I could find. The only reason this is here is because my house, typical of the construction here in Texas, is not square and my table sticks out from the wall on one end so the plywood ensures the foam board stays on the table.

I have a small tripod (6-inches) that works great for this picture taking arrangement. Depending on what I use to hold the fly for the picture, I have different size hook boxes I can either put the fly or the tripod on top of so that I am always shooting level.

I use a surge protector for the lights so they are easily turned off when not in use and the cords are manageable and out of the way.

I have not tried taking any pictures shooting down at something yet, but I would think it would be easily adaptable with the colored foam on the table, aim the lights down, and then try not to leave a shadow with my fat head or something like that.

I did a bunch of Flies in Stages for my Beginning Fly Tying class using my new picture taking center and they turned out fantastic. The hardest part was trying to tie the damn fly around the camera and tripod.

Now all I do is finish the fly, put it in a clamp of some type and turn my chair around and with a couple of quick adjustments, start snapping pictures.

In theory, I now have no more excuses for poor fly pictures.