Close to Home

The more I use my macro lens, the more I learn about what to do as well as what not to do in order to get a good close-up shot. I also seem to gain a greater respect for true macro shooters with almost every picture I take, as is the case in point here. For a while now I have thought about trying to get a picture of a single key on my keyboard, kind of like what you might see on a stock photo site. How hard could it be, I thought to myself every time I came across a PowerPoint presentation with some kind of call to action enhanced with a keyboard closeup.

Turns out that, while not extremely difficult, it does involve a bit more challenge than I was prepared for.

First of all, I wanted to use (what else?) my Nanlite Pavotubes to light the keyboard in a way that was a bit more interesting than just plain white-and-gray. I also didn’t really want to get this shot in the laundry room since I was kind of tired of moving things around and attempting to set up my tripod and lights in a way that would work without stepping on plastic baskets or an errant dish rag. That meant I had to create this image at night after my kids were in bed so I could turn out most of the lights in the house and just get the glow from my Pavotubes. I waited until an evening when my wife was out with a friend so I could create the setup I needed for this photo without causing her to wander the house with a flashlight, busted out my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens, opened up my bag-o-lights, and got to work.

The actual setup here was pretty simple: one light on the right set to a blue-ish color, and another one on the left set to orange. (I don’t remember the exact HSL values, but blue and orange are close enough.) I put my camera on a tripod, angled it down, adjusted the aperture to get the word “home” in focus but not much else, and fired off a couple shots. I also did the same with the “return” key just for fun but ended up liking this series better.

What I realized when I imported these into Lightroom was something I had never considered while setting up the shot: my keyboard is filthy! I even brushed it off a bit before taking this picture but oh my goodness, when viewed up close I could see dirt, dust, hair, and other nastiness all over the place. I had no idea. I immediately set about removing some bits with the heal tool in Lightroom but soon realized it was a fool’s errand. I would need to spend an hour cleaning and tweaking and refining, or I could just use the image as-is and treat it as a learning experience.

You can probably guess which option I went with :)

I do like the overall idea here, and it would be a fun shot to re-create someday, but for now I think I’m just going to chalk this up as one of those images that teaches me a lot more than I thought it would. And maybe also try to clean my keyboard a bit more often too…