Feature: Photos of Art and Finishing them properly can be darn hard to do
Motivation: Advice on the finishing side but also tips on Art photo taking

If you let it out that you have a new digital camera or that you are a semi-professional photographer - watch out, you may be importuned to take pictures for family and friends on all sorts of occasions and events. Here is the event to be avoided like the A-train to Hello No. 9- taking pictures of new works of art.

First, as you know from personal experience artists have a...uhhh somewhat exaggerated estimations of how good their art is - and how others (including you doing the free photography for them)can't see the brilliance of their work. Unfortunately, sometimes photos are like cold showers - they really show what is hot and what is not. But for the moment, lets assume that is not the problem. The challenge before you is to take 2 to 20 good photos of your sister-in-laws reasonable works of art.

Essential Tips on Taking Art Photos

Here is the essential tip - glass makes taking pictures of some art extremely difficult - and non-glare glass is even worse. So the number one tip is to remove the glass covering a piece if at all possible.Also glossy works of art like oil paintings or acrylics, or mylar/glossy plastics present nasty glare challenges. You should be more likely to say yes to the photo art assignment if it involves small pieces, matte or rough in texture, fairly flat and not encased in glass or translucent plastic. But you and I know - you take what they give you.

The next most important advice is to use natural light whenever possible. Choose a bright but cloudy day. the diffuse light of a cloudy day makes for the best possible pictures. Next, if it is bright and sunny retreat into shade or take your pictures when the sun has retreated behind the clouds. This latter case often gives the most diffuse and at least color tinged light (its often seen as a tinge of gray - like a neutral density filter). But be prepared to have to go to artificial light. Also b aware that at early morning and late afternoon, sun light is remarkably color tinged so you may need to correct for this.

Some photographers consider this stinging of "natural" light as the reason they prefer to work in studio lighting where they can control the the lights coloring precisely. but even in the case of artificial lighting, living room lamps and house lighting requires correcting for correcting for incandescent and/or florescent color shifts. So if you must go indoors and use artificial light think in terms of a camera flash and then one or possibly two independent lights. Camera Flash can often do the trick directly especially if you have a flash diffuser or light bouncing target or umbrella.

For example, my Canon EOS allows me to put on a plastic diffuser that works wonders by softening what would be harsh flash edges. By using a Blitz or other external flash, I can have the light bounce of an aluminized screen or umbrella to further diffuse or soften the light on the art work. Getting a broad, uniform and diffuse light on an art work is the absolute key to taking good art photos. But the methods for doing this have already decimated a few hundred hectares of forest in terms of books, magazines and other admonishments on how to do this exactly right; so I will cutout here and advise readers to check out the tomes listed below for some good enlightment on lighting tricks and methods.

Finally having a gray card is absolutely critical. But as we shall see below using it properly is also essential too.

Art Pix PhotoFinishing Tips

The following tips come from an actual assignment, doing some pictures of my Mom's works of art for posting on the Internet (see here the finished photos) and use in an upcoming art show. The photos were taken on the back porch of my parent's place on an intermittently sunny day. I had a gray card to calibrate my white balance and exposure settings;but I did not need to use it until near the end of the shoot when the sun came out at 5PM with all guns blazing. It changed one of the images despite gray card readings and adjustments (see IMG7914 and IMG7915).

I planned to use Corel PaintShop Pro X for three reasons. First it has a Manual Color Correction command that makes short work of any lighting tinges. Second, if I am doing any indoor lighting there is also a command, Color Balance, that allows correction for lighting color shifts quickly. Finally, there is a simple, but powerful set of Rotate, Straighten, and most importantly Perspective Corrections tools that save loads of time in getting an image "squared away".

However, I still managed to goof the shoot. I have a white card on the opposite side of my gray card. Did I bother to put in the gray card with either side showing in several of my photos? NO. Why? - no excuse, sir. Fortunately I get rescued by white borders and colors in the art works. Moral of the story - use a gray card/white card religiously not just for when taking exposure readings.

An Example

The example is a wood carving in which I swear I got squared away and the perfect focal distance for taking the image with no distortion. The day time was 5:00PM bright, but cloudy day on the open back porch shielding from direct sunlight.Here is the original image:

I did not use raw but rather .JPG large compression on a Canon Digital Rebel 35mm SLR. Too my surprise despite white balance and exposure metering on my gray card in manual mode (so shutter and aperture are completely under my control), the image came out under-exposed and color shifted to a gray blue cool tinge. But at least I got the image squared away.

So we have to correct for Color Balance and then Exposure. Some photofinishers insist on doing the exposure first and then the color balance. I prefer the opposite sequence, getting the color balance close, correct for exposure and then return to color balance for a final correction. To each his own poison.

The command in Paintshop Pro X is Adjust | Color Balance. The dialog to the left pops up. Click the Advanced Options and Smart White Balance check boxes to get a full set of options. Then just click in the upper left thumbnail on a white gray, or black area of the image. PaintShop Pro automatically measures the color balance and adjusts accordingly. It is remarkably accurate - rarely do I have to use the lower slider o make the image warmer or cooler as required.

Note what is happening - the image which has a greyblue hue is brought back to a warmer and truer color setting. Let me assure you the wall and floor paint is a light beige not a blue pewter. So the upper scale is showing that it is correcting automatically for a picture that is overall blue/cool in tone.

This is exactly the color correction wanted. Yet when I took the pictures on the back porch I saw warm tones - what is happening here ? Shaded light is often color tinged - slightly to profoundly to the cooler. Our eyes automatically adjust - the camera sensors do not - it is a case of our lying eyes! But if I take the woodcut out into the direct sunlight the shift is to warmer and the bright light highlights some of the rough edges inevitable in wood carving. So I chose the porch where the more diffuse light softens the edges.

Even after correcting for color balance the image, as seen in the right thumbnail above appears too dark. So we use the Manual Color Correction tool. For some reason Corel has taken this off the menu commands. This is my favorite color correction tool why Corel is hiding it is ominous. Users have to go into Customize mode (right click anywhere on the menubar or toolbars) click on Unused Commands (arghh!), find manual color correction and drag the icon to the toolbar and give it a prominent place.

The Manual Color Correction dialog box to the right is the most powerful color and gray tone correction tool on the market bar none. It allows you to use your image as a great big Color card.

For example, I know my Mom used Titanium white oils to paint the shawl - so for Preset target color I choose Pure Colors. then in the color chip pulldown menu I select the white chip.

Finally to make the color correction I go again to the left thumbnail of the dialog and highlight a small square where the color should be purest white. If dumbo here had remembered to leave the gray card in the picture, this would not be a such a hit or miss proposition. And because I am going to crop down to the art work, there is plenty of image space to place the card in.

Despite my error, the correction works out very well and lifts the pall of gray from the image. I immediately do the final correction with the Adjust | Color Balance command used above. the correction is minor and shifts the image a bit warmer.

So now all I have to do is crop the image to the edges of the woodcut. Well, despite all my efforts to produce a squared away image, the Crop tool's boundaries (see image to the left)show that I am slightly off the mark.

Time to use the Perspective Correction tool. This is the sixth tool down in the toolbar (it may not be showing because it is combined with the Straighten tool - just click on the little down arrow and the fly out toolbar menu will present the Perspective Correction tool).

The Perspective Correction tool is another godsend - it squares away portions of an image so that you look like a plumb line perfect photographer. I sometimes use this tool rather rotating or using its companion Straighten tool.

It works quite simply. Just place the four corners of the Perspective Correction tool on the four corners of your "should be rectangular" object . then double click the object (or just click the green checkmark up in the tool options bar ) and in instant the image is perfectly squared away.

If the correction is major than there can be some notable image distortion; but PaintShop Pro's perspective correction algorithm is remarkably good - minimizing those distortions.

The bottom line is that the Perspective Correction tool is so good I no longer worry about getting plumbline perfectly squared away when taking pictures of artworks.

Summary

Taking pictures of works of art is remarkably challenging. getting the lighting right is absolutely essential. The critical tool is having a gray card and using it- by putting the gray card in the picture where the general lighting conditions are reflected. For digital camera, having the gray card in allows much quicker and truer color corrections. Also having powerful tools like PaintShop Pro's Manual Color Correction and Perspective Correction tools can speed up processing. In short, photos of artwork is challenging work. If you come prepared, get more than a beer for your services.

Lighting Resources:

Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers
by Christopher Grey
Light - Science and Magic : An Introduction to Photographic Lighting
by Fil Hunter, Paul Fuqua
Still Life (Pro-Lighting Series)
by Roger Hicks, Frances Schultz
Where to get handy Gray Cards
Qpcards.com