I just obtained a specimen of a huge Lion's Paw sea shell to join my giant seahorse in a marine specimen series I'm shooting on 8x10 ortho film for contact printing. My biggest issue so far is the background.
I've narrowed it down to one of two different types of sand---decomposed granite from a beach at Camp Chawanakee at Shaver Lake and a coarse sand from a beach at Moss Landing (out back of Phil's Fish Market!)
My reason for using medium coarse sand is to provide texture without overwhealming the marine specimens, and fine sand just wasn't doing it as it looked too featurless.
Problem #2 is how to make a "sweep" of sorts as I don't want to shoot straight down into a sand box as it makes for difficult lighting due to shadows(I'm using natural light and reflectors.)
I'm thinking of using a lug box (like the kind fruit comes in) filled with the sand and a piece of stiff paper sprayed with 3m adhesive and coated with the same sand to form the sweep, burying one end of the sand "paper" in the lug box so I can prop up the specimens.
What do you think? Any other suggestions?