Photo Challenge: Dragon's Shadow

Hello everybody!  And here I am, 2021, and still tackling @OrchidDoll's30 Days Photograhy Challenge. Also known as lazy AF? I don't think so, but I can't honestly take a nice shot per day... I wish I had the time!

Anyways, today I tried to make two shots: Silhouette and Shadows. I knew my dragons would be easier, since they are smaller. So here is the finished photo, and at the bottom I have multiple edits, and ranting of how I did to take this one!

So, first of all... this wasn't an easy one to take! I had to wait until the night, so there was no additional light interfering. I turned everything out, and put the dragons on top of a black box. Their distance to the wall was of about 20~30cm, give or take. Then, I also had one of those cilindrical table lamps (more or less like this). That lamp shape was important, because the light beam is somewhat concentrated at the top, but it is also slightly difussed.

The box was in the flor, so I tumbled the light over in the flow. This way, the "top" was "beaming out" towards my dragons. The more far away I pushed the light, the more solid and defined the shadows became. The closer the lamp got, the shadows would turn softer and blurrier.

Then, I had the challenge of actually taking the photo. The problem here was that I wanted it to be exactly from the front, but in most angles, I will just either interrupt the lightbeam, or shadow over the dragons. I ended up squatting with the lamp between my feet, while holding the breath to steady the camera. Anyways! The things I do for doll photography! Overall, my settings were:

• My Sony a7R iv body, with a Tamrom 35mm f2.8 macro lens. Manual shooting in compressed RAW.
• Settings: f2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO 200.
• Handheld, with IBIS (in-body stabilization) activated. To improve this, I held my breath everytime I was going to shoot.

Now, I always shoot RAW. On this camera I am forced into the compressed RAW because my SD cards are not that big, honestly. But to edit it, I followed this process. First, I selected one of the 183 shots that was the best in terms of focus, angle, and overall framing. Yes, I took 183 shots just to pick one. That one, unedited, is the top-left of the below collage. Then, I cropped it, and edited it in colour. Then, I produced 4 black-and-white sets; 3 of them were made using free Lightroom presets, and the last one was "by hand".

Here are all the shots!

Overall, I knew from the start I was aiming for black-and-white, simply because I thought that (1) the shadow/silhouette would work either with contrasting backgrounds like a sky, or with no colours and all, and (2) because I think it improved the photo a lot! I don't like the colour picture, but I do think that the dragons appear to be the only think in colour... though I should've used Theros or Eiar (pink/green) in that case, because Aion is gray and he gets mixed in the grayness of the photo!

Anyways, hope you liked this one! Which of all the edits is your favourite?? I was really in the fence between the bottom-middle or bottom-right!