The Photography Rule You Can Ignore

We've all heard them - the Photography Rules: get it done professionally, and make sure your photograph matches the colors in your painting or sculpture.

This post is about why certain aspects of The Rules are vital, and why you can ignore the rest of it.

Now, I have a wonderful photographer.  I've even posted about him before.  When he photographs my paintings he involves me in the final decision making session, where we look at the painting side-by-side with the computer image and adjust things until we're both satisfied.  Along with this comes constant education on manipulating Photoshop so that when I'm on my own I can create reasonably passable images to post on my website and blogs.

I recently took in two paintings that I'd photographed on my own; as you can see, there are significant differences between my versions and the professional images. I want to suggest the important reasons why this might be so. 

The images on the left are mine: the images on the right came from Studio 7.  His camera is a Nikon D300, mine is a Sony DSC-W70.  All images are sized the same and at 72 resolution for this comparison. Aside from the fact this his camera is better than mine, capturing detail my camera missed, there might be other causes for the poor images:

My computer monitor may need recalibrating.  This means I may be adjusting photographs for brightness and contrast on a monitor that is calibrated incorrectly, causing my images to appear darker than they actually are. I may be adjusting an image until it looks "right" on my computer, but ultimately reads too washed out on other computers.

I might not have my white balance adjusted correctly.  If your camera allows a white balance adjustment, experiment with it to see how your images change.  My photographer recommended filling the frame completely with something you know to be white under the light source you are using - professionals often use a gray card but that isn't something casual photographers have on hand.  If the white background looks white and not pink or yellow or gray, you are dialed in correctly.

I'm playing around with adjustments in Photoshop too much.  I learned not to do this during my last session.  I first check the histogram to see if I've achieved a bell curve for luminosity, meaning that the surface of the painting was evenly lit.  Then I will go to the Enhance menu, select Adjust Brightness/contrast.  There is a second histogram here and I adjust using the slider.  In my most recent session I learned ways to use the paint brush and Curve, but I've not yet tried to use them on any images.

Now, here is one rule you can ignore - well, kind of:

I must match the color in my photograph to the colors in my painting.

Simply put, this is impossible to do.

Paint is reflective, meaning that light first strikes the surface, bounces back from opaque pigments, penetrates transparent pigments and then bounces back from the substrate through the pigment, before it is perceived by your eye and interpreted by your brain.  The colors in computers, slide transparencies and digital images, are generated by a light source, which means certain colors will be more vivid, and contrasts more apparent because the photographer has removed surface glare with a polarized lens. 

Unfortunately, colors reflected by light will never match the clarity and intensity of colors generated by light.  And the subtle reflected glare, produced by every surface including watercolor paper, affects the way the human eye will perceive color under various lighting conditions.  Pigments are interpreted differently too: your eye "sees" Violet Blue as a light blueish gray, but the camera might interpret it as lavender. 

Artists are also dealing with the thousands of hues perceived by the eye, reduced to what can be suggested with pigments, altered further by what can be reproduced by digital media using Red, Green and Blue, then printed with inks mixing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.

This means that an artist must often find a "Best Fit" between warm and cool.  In my images above, Winter Path needed adjustments with the Photoshop paint brush tool to emphasize the soft greens on the snow without altering the yellows or reds.  In Row of Autumn Trees, the color of the foreground is slightly warmer than in the Studio 7 photograph -  but the trees are more distinct and true, and the important yellow-green focal point in the background is now evident and providing the interest that was lost in my version.  

So if you are frustrated by paintings that don't get into juried shows or images on your website that appear "different", it might be time to invest in a professional photographer just to see if there's a difference. 

And if you are going to recalibrate your computer monitor - here's a bit of advice from personal experience: write down your current settings before you go messing around with something so vital to an artist.  Just in case you need to reset everything back the way it was. 

I am also pleased to announce that Winter Path and Row of Autumn Trees have both been invited into "WAOWing the Golden State", the 40th Annual 2010 Women Artists of the West national juried exhibition to be held at the Olaf Wieghorst Museum in El Cajon, California.  It was a highly competitive jury with over 420 entries, and I am honored to be included.

WAOWing the Golden State

June 4 through 30, 2010

The Olaf Wieghorst Museum

131 Rea Avenue, El Cajon, CA 92020

Juror: Peggi Kroll Roberts

Comments

[kaylyn]

This is a late comer comment, but I recalled seeing this post and not reading it thoroughly. I had a bunch of work professionally photographed a couple of weeks ago. The difference between what I thought were pretty good photos and the real photos was shocking.

I have both old and new photos posted on my blog...its easy to see that the expense of having the photos taken was worth every penny.

One quick monitor setting change recommended during photoshop setup...set both contrast and brightness to 100. Makes a big difference.

[Euphrosene Labon]

Just to let you know I nominated you for a Kreative Blogger Award: http://www.euphrosenelabon.com/modules/wordpress/

[Sue Smith]

Bonnie, I have a similar problem. Photos look good on my PC but totally washed out on my Mac laptop. My photographer told me that laptops are not good for adjusting/seeing color (wish Id known that before I bought it!) I once tried to adjust and upload photos from IPhoto in the MAC and they were all so over-saturated I never did it again. My solution is to check my website from other computers when I can and as long as things look reasonably close I dont worry about it. I do still have an occasionalproblem with some photos appearing washed out - maybe Donalds suggestion will solve that now.

-------Original Message-------

[Sue Smith]

Thanks, Donald! I triedadjustinga photo using the levels (I had to go to Photoshop help to figure it out!) That works very well. For those of you interested, when you open a photo, go to the enhance tab, then brightness and contrast.Select levels. You will see a histogram with a slider beneath it. There are three tabs you can move. Move the outside tabs in to the first appearance of pixels (the beginning and endof your bell curve), this sets the black (dark) and white (light) range. Then move the middle slider in either direction until you achieve the color and contrast that you want. Photos I thought were so bad I needed to re-shoot them suddenly became very good. I think Im getting excited about photographing my own work again - and thats a good thing!

-------Original Message-------

[Bonnie H]

Hey Sue
Big Congratulations on the WAOW show!!!!!
Bonnie

[Bonnie H]

Thanks Sue
One problem I'm having is that on my computer monitor, the images look as if I need to de-saturate them to be true to the painting, while on my husband's monitor they look like I need to increase the saturation.

For more accurate colour and information I've started taking RAW images and adjusting the white balance in Photoshop.

But I'm still getting the "Oh your paintings look so much better in real life than they do on your web" statements. So my photography is not there yet.
Bonnie

[Donald Diddams]

A good post and important subject for painters who want to show their work digitally! As Lorrie suggests, most digital cameras these days will take photos more than adequate for display on a monitor after a little photoshop tune-up. However, even with photoshop, it can be difficult to compensate for uneven lighting or glare.
Lorrie mentioned "levels" in photoshop, which can be very useful for contrast and even color balance, and is more flexible than the "brightness and contrast" adjustments. The "lens-correction" filter can also get rid of any distortion that a less expensive camera lens might introduce. Those are the primary tools I use when photographing art for others.

[Sue Smith]

Thanks, Lori! Your information is very helpful. Ido use the unmask sharp filter, but now I will have to research to see if I can find Lab in my Photoshop Elements. For artists, the technical side of this subject can be very intimidating in the beginning, with so much to learn in an area that we often view as an addendum to what we actually do. I appreciate what you have shared.

-------Original Message-------

[Lorrie]

Hello Sue...

I have looked at both images carefully, and in my judgement (as a graphic designer as well as a painter) that he has used the 'unsharp mask' filter, though in 'Lab' and not RGB in Photoshop, as well as having adjusted the levels quite significantly. If you are expert at photoshop, even with a really poor photograph of anything (including a painting) taken in terrible light, it's possible to alter it enough in photoshop to have it looking as close to the real thing as near as dammit.