Choosing a Background Color

When I began thinking about making this site, one of the first decisions I needed to make was deciding how I wanted to show my flies. What size, what proportions and what color background. A bright medium blue is by far the most commonly used color for the web and print. It shows off flies well and is pleasing to the eye. But I just didn’t want to be the same. So what to do?

I grabbed a fly, in this case my favorite Rust Stim. Then using a pack of colored paper, I took a bunch of pictures of that fly in the same lighting. I just replaced the paper behind the fly. From these pictures I narrowed it down to 4 or 5 colors. I showed these pictures to several people to get their input. I decided to go with the dark gray. I’ve used it until the last post, where I used a light, neutral gray for the Mahogany Dun background.

Here is a gallery of the original pictures. What do you think of the colors? Which would you choose for your pictures?

(You can click to enlarge the photos for a better look at the contrast of the fly against the colored paper.)

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