What have you tied today?

[rannoch raider]

For sure! That's got fish killer written all over it.  :wink:

[Lochan_load]

Aye looks good for twitching through a ripple to me!
If you're struggling with how to spin the hair you could do worse than checking a Dave Macphail vid on YouTube, I could do a step by step but it's hard to show the technique in a photo.
You basically form a wing with the deer hair you want to spin with two half tight turns of thread and then wind the thread round and tighten at the same time, it brings the deer hair around the shank and makes it Spring out to form the muddler head. Also important to be laying the hair over an even bed of thread, if it's leaning down towards the eye you'll struggle to get the spin even. If you were sitting with me I could show you easy, it's harder to write!

[JimJams]

Yeah Ive seen videos and understand the concept, it's just putting it into practice!, need to get more deer hair to practice with!

[Lochan_load]

Yeah it took me a lot of failed attempts til I got it right, just got to stick with it. Doesn't look like you're far off and that'll certainly do the job!

[JimJams]

A couple more since im now off till the 5th of january, time off doesn't come often for me! Gives me a little time to work on my tying and photography. Any tips for the photographs? Currently there stuffed in a shoe box and im buggering about with settings on the camera!

[rannoch raider]

Yep, they'll do the trick. :wink:

[speydulika]

A couple more since im now off till the 5th of january, time off doesn't come often for me! Gives me a little time to work on my tying and photography. Any tips for the photographs?

If you want a couple of dead simple tips for fly photography the first I would recommend is losing the white card background. I always used to use white but invariably the camera makes it look dirty grey and in my opinion detracts from the colours in the fly. It was suggested to me that using a blue background works better and to be honest it really does. You can buy blue card for about 20p per sheet from any craft shop or stationers such as Staples. Another consideration at least for me is the fact that light blue works much better than dark blue. A second consideration is that in your photographs your have cast a shadow with your fly. I think that this is caused by the flash on your camera. A suggestion that was made to me was to not use flash and use some additional external lighting. I tried this but could not get the lighting correct. I found a far more practical solution was to move the background further away from the fly.

By the way the shrimp pattern looks a bit tasty 

[JimJams]

I'll give it a bash and see how I get on! Ignore the synthetic jungle cock on the shrimp, waiting on a cape arriving!

[corsican dave]

. Any tips for the photographs?

not that i'm any expert, but when I can be bothered I use black foam (from the craft shop) as the background, a normal tungsten desk lamp above and slightly to the side of the fly and the fluorescent light of my tying room as the ambient. I don't use the flash, put the camera on something solid as a stand and use the macro setting with auto focus. I then select the self timer for a couple of seconds. pre-focus with the shutter half down, then press the button, let go of the camera and let it do its stuff.

the black foam dissipates the light quite nicely and the timed release eliminates any shake. this is a point-&-pray camera, btw

when I can't be bothered (mostly  :lol:) I just put the sheet of foam on the desk, lay the fly on top and shoot. still no flash, tho'. great thing about this, apart from being lazy, is that you can't get a shadow as there's no gap!  :

[speydulika]

I have just posted a step by step called 'Squeal Piggy Squeal'. I have used a blue background for the main sequence and finished off using a white background from some older step by steps from back in the day. I hope it proves useful to emphasise my point.