[Tanner Studios]

Lynnie, Now not unfolding the tripod is lazy. LOL It is important to use a tripod with low power lights. And Macro photography. You need to shoot with a longer exposure so you can get an f/stop to give you the depth of field you will need. Also motion has a greater impact when shooting close up, just like it does when shooting will long telephoto lens.

The white point is more a function of color balance then exposure. And like I said your color balance looks fine. Although it may look like it has a blue bias. Thats just because its underexposed. The problem really is the limitations of meters reading all of the white in the shot. Ski photographers had to open up at-lease one stop over the meter reading to compensate for the snow ( in the days of film ).

Remember what I said at the first of this tut. About throwing information away. If the image is close, to start with. You will not have to throw away as much. But in this case of underexposure, you have to throw out a lot just to get the background to white. Which means your throwing out the good with the bad. Some of that information was needed for the color saturation. So it is important to start with a good photograph.

Remember the Zone System for printing Black & White written by Ansel Adams? OMG, rather have a bullet in my brain then read that book again.
Simplified It went something like this. There are eleven tones ( zones ) you could achieve with B&W photography. Black was 1 and white was 11. Sound familiar? The goal was to hold detail ( information ) in all zones while achieving all eleven zones. Shoot for shadow detail and process for highlight detail. Levels are the zone system for digital photography.

Sorry bit of a ramble.
Scott