Photographing a painting

[ionian]

My father-in-law is an artist (lets not get into a discussion about his work, I know we have some quite opinionated art critics here ) and asked me to photograph some of his work for an exhibition catalogue. The most challenging was the picture I have on my living room wall - it is glass fronted, and there are potential reflections all around.

I'm going to describe how I approached it and I'd appreciate feedback on whether you feel there was anything else I should consider, or other techniques I could use. This is a technical task where my job was to show the work to the best of my ability.

I set up two shoot through umbrellas with continuous lights either side and below the painting, and had my camera on a tripod so the lens was level with the bottom of the frame. This low set up was to avoid reflecting the camera or light back in the image. I added a CPL filter. I then checked the image for reflections- there was a glow from the light reflecting back of the TV so I covered this with a black cloth. I then set the CPL to minimise glare and took the shot, overexposed by one and a third stop from the matrix reading. This allowed the white wall to stay white. I was using my best zoom set at the sweet spot for sharpness and lack of distortion.

The resulting image straight out of camera was this:



Taking it into post, I added contrast, clarity, set the white and black points and tweaked the saturation. I then transformed the image to get it appear square, and cropped.

The resulting image is this:



comments welcome on technique, lighting etc. I know it could, in theory, just be a snapshot job but I want to present it as well as I can.

[Shadowman]

Looks fine technically, it might be exhibited on a white wall so the additional border might be fine as is or it could create an unintentional visual not representing your father's work.

[bje07]

Good workflow and nice result

[Mike Buckley]

If you light the piece evenly from both sides at a 45-degree angle assuming the camera distance renders the light sources outside the family of angles, you should not need to lower the camera, need to use the polarizer, and you should not need to light the piece from the bottom. Unless your light sources are so small that they prevent you from evenly lighting the piece, you also should not need the umbrellas. Indeed, the umbrellas might be making the light source so big that they might be spreading light into the family of angles. If that's happening they would create the direct reflections you are trying of course to avoid.

All of the above assumes that there are no other direct or indirect light sources in the room falling on the scene that are brighter in the scene than the lamps you are using to light the subject.

All of that is discussed in the 5th edition of Light: Science & Magic on pages 68 - 83 and is also discussed ver batim in earlier editions of the book.

Considering that accurate replication of color is so important in this project, also consider using this.

[ionian]

Thanks - agreed that he needs to check with the gallery about how they want it displayed, but hopefully this will give him some images as a portfolio that can be cropped. Often the regional galleries just take a quick snap rather than displaying them well on their websites.

Mike - thanks - l:s&m added to the Xmas list! The colour checker would also be useful, I'll see if I can borrow one.

[madcrow]

fabulous piece of work, well done.

[Cogito]

Simon, please don't take this as criticism but would it display batter against a non-white background?

[ionian]

Simon, please don't take this as criticism but would it display batter against a non-white background?

Tony - that does look better, but I'd need to ensure that I use the same shade of grey on every image. Good eye, thanks!

[Mike Buckley]

My guess is that the people that produce the exhibition catalogue are going to display all the images using a uniform style of their choosing.

[Cogito]

Tony - that does look better, but I'd need to ensure that I use the same shade of grey on every image. Good eye, thanks!

Just select the same fill colour in whatever PP you use and DON'T CHANGE IT. I found a pale grey or pale blue worked here but without reference to any other paintings you have photographed....