Why I’m not a fan of it.

Blue background, the fly looks well exposed to me
Same capture, poorly processed.

I have fly-tying books where just about every picture of a fly is against a blue background – I’m not a fan.

I’ve a rather nice new Fly Tyers Mat. Placed behind my vice, the mat gives me a large, clear, clean, light-blue space for materials and tools. I still usually tie with a white contrast background behind the fly, but the blue works too and this mat is large enough to sit in my line of sight. I will use it as a photo background occasionally – but not too often!

For photographing flies in FF&FT we use a couple of style conventions for fly-photographs, that regularly means the fly is on a white surface, on a prop, in a group. Flies reach me with simple shooting instructions (and occasional impractical suggestions, my particular favourite is “on something Irish” [loads of scope there! –Editor.])
It’s my job to shoot fairly high resolution digital photos. I look for a little variety, angles, shadows, props (a small regular selection) trying to meet the simple brief, but avoid monotony.

When I’m shooting tying sequences I tend to shoot the vice stages against a neutral background, often with a slight gradient; lighter below, darker above. Again, I tend to favour shades of grey, but I do use occasionally hang a coloured back-drop.

A fly against a plain pale-blue background can be fine… occasionally. I start having issues when the blue background throws a cooling colour-cast which dulls and muddies the image, including the colours in the fly. That’s really down to technical issues; poor lighting or exposure, and poor white balance is common. A load of blue in the image fools the auto white balance, and/or the blue makes it hard/impossible to correct the white balance.

Then, there’ the look of the image; ‘on blue’ a fly pic can look like a specimen, for example, every butterfly prepared and presented the same way. In a book the same bold background seems to me to get in the way, it draws attention to itself, becomes intrusive…as I say, I’m not a fan.

Magnus Angus