A colleague of mine pulled a little joke on a co-worker. The co-worker had a little bird on her desk. He took the bird, wrapped a napkin around it's eyes and placed a rubber band around it's torso, to simulate rope. The bird is only 3 inches long. Perhaps 2 inches tall. His goal was to send her a note informing her that her bird was bird-napped. He wasn't extorting money or anything. It was just for laughs.
He asked me to photograph the bird, so he can send her a picture of the bird-napped bird. We use large WACOM tablets. I placed the bird on top of his tablet and used my tablet as a background. Effectively making a semi-seamless. I used a small lamp to act as one of those hanging lights we are all so familiar with when someone is given the third degree when being questioned.
Since I was using a Macro lens, I knew my depth of field (dof) was going to be pretty shallow. I under exposed as much as I thought the image could sustain without muddy-ing up the bird. I went into Lightroom; and I used the gradient ND filter effect to under-expose the image further at the top, bottom, and sides. In the end my colleague loved it and our co-worker roared with laughter.
Bird-napped