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Made some mods to my setup and re-shot the snake shed. I used oblique
lighting to bring out the dimensional aspects and bounced some soft
light into the back of the shed to bring out the translucent detail. This is
evident in the small horizontal lines.
Yes. It is a shed of a black snake. For this shot, I sliced a portion of
the shed along the edge, or "waist", allowing me to photograph the "top"
scales, as the bottom scales are longitudinal along the body. The top
scales are the typical diamond shape.
Since the shed is translucent with very small lines that appear to be
transparent, I bounced some light from behind the subject to get some
reveal of the lines with the rest of the scales.
I used the same light source (multiple fiber optic heads) to illuminate the
camera side, setup in a oblique position.
At first I thought the small lines between the scale boundaries were
incorrect, so I took a loupe and verified they actually did exist.
I thought the metallic rendering was very different.