0:00

let’s get started hello and welcome to our program how to photograph artwork artwork with blaine campbell

0:05

co-presented by art gallery of alberta in carfax alberta my name is michael magnuson i am the public programmer at

0:12

the art gallery of alberta to start this program i would like to do a land acknowledgement this land on which we

0:18

are situated is part of treaty six territory where indigenous peoples have been making and creating since time

0:23

immemorial these are the ancestral and traditional lands of diverse indigenous peoples including the cree

0:30

dene blackfoot salto nakotasu and metis we acknowledge nixon’s gratitude to the

0:36

many first nations metis and inuit whose footsteps have marked these lands for generations and who continue to call

0:43

this place home today we are of course privileged in this digital realm to gather together from

0:49

multiple places so i encourage any of you who do not share these same lands with us to take a moment to acknowledge

0:56

the people of the land on which you are situated and tuning in from

1:01

before we get started i would like to mention a few events that are happening at the art gallery of alberta and june

1:08

uh we are celebrating pride month with two programs a film night on june 9th where we are screening the camp classic

1:14

but i’m a cheerleader at 6pm and the oscar win oscar-winning film moonlight at 8 p.m we

1:21

are also hosting a full day of celebrations at the gallery called pride day at the aga which features a great

1:27

day of activities drag film screenings on june 18th uh june is also indigenous

1:33

history month and we are opening the gallery on june 21st for a free day at the gallery in recognition of national

1:40

indigenous people’s day from 11am to 5pm uh for full information please visit our

1:46

website i would also like to mention that we are hosting our first art party called refinery on july 22nd uh early bird

1:54

tickets are only 25 and are available for another week so uh please visit our website for all that

2:00

information as well this is a virtual program and will last one hour roughly with a q a at the end

2:07

if you have any questions please write them in the chat or the q a function in zoom and we will answer them at the end

2:14

uh also i would like to thank our sponsor uh the canada council for the arts for sponsoring this program

2:20

and without further delay i’m gonna pass this off to chris our partner at carfax

2:25

alberta chris take it away thank you very much michael and the aga for partnering

2:31

with carfax alberta on the session that will teach all of us how to take

2:37

a few better pictures of our art so i am chris carson the executive

2:42

director of carfax alberta carfax alberta is the provincial arts service

2:47

organization that serves visual artists we work to advance best practices for

2:53

all visual artists through education advocacy and engagement

2:59

carfak alberta envisions a province where all visual artists can thrive

3:04

where our work is valued rates are respected and creativity is integral to our

3:11

communities and it’s my pleasure tonight to introduce you to blaine campbell he’s an

3:17

alberta based artist working both in photography sculpture and video

3:24

and as an artist his thematic interests have included the inherent properties of

3:30

the photograph in its relation to the viewer landscape use and modification

3:36

processes of meditation and artifice in relation

3:41

to transcendent experience and parallels between josh detero’s textuality and quantum

3:49

theory as a commercial photographer blaine devises time between edmonton and

3:55

vancouver and as a commercial photographic services are primarily

4:01

centered in architecture and fine art documentation working with architectural

4:07

and construction firms museums and galleries clients in the past have included the

4:12

art gallery of alberta the remy collection translink city of vancouver art speak

4:19

simon fraser university galleries the museum of anthropology burnaby art

4:25

gallery the remy modern amongst others so today we have a real expert with us

4:31

to kind of share and kind of teach us a little bit more uh as michael kind of mentioned

4:39

it’s very i would suggest that we kind of save our chat uh you can save their chat by just

4:46

going into the chat going clicking on those kind of three little dots after the chat and saving it because

4:54

uh there is this document that uh blaine has campbell has placed in it that

5:00

probably teaches you a lot of what he’s going to show you tonight but so really

5:06

make sure you save and download this pdf document that the plane has for you okay

5:12

and write down your questions and without further ado blaine please take it away and thank you very much

5:20

great thanks chris um and thanks very else for coming hopefully this will be of some value to

5:26

you it’s going to be very rushed admittedly it’s a very short amount of time to cover

5:33

a lot of potentially technical material so i’m going to try to touch on a few

5:38

key points uh things that i think will generally improve uh the quality of what you’re

5:44

getting in terms of your arc documentation um i’m gonna demo stuff a little bit that’s

5:49

gonna be a little bit clunky over zoom uh but hopefully i won’t make anybody too motion sick with my cell phone uh demo

5:57

and stuff and then we’ll wrap up going into a little bit of editing on one image

6:02

uh just to give you an idea of how you can sort of improve things after the fact taking the pictures so

6:08

um the one thing i’d really recommend uh and i’ve i put this together

6:13

years ago and and updated it periodically since i put together this pdf

6:19

covering a few key points uh and things to consider again very introductory there’s

6:26

photography as a profession there’s a ton of technical material that can feed into it and

6:32

change how things come out uh but hopefully this document is of some value to you so i’ve posted it in the chat uh as the

6:39

first item and then uh we’ll be resharing it again at the end just in case uh you can’t find it so

6:46

uh having said all that i’m going to jump in uh with my cell phone

6:52

and uh we’ll walk through a little bit of a setup and a few key points uh things to consider

6:58

uh when you are shooting and then as i say we’ll go into the edit so if you’ll bear with me for one second

7:03

here i’m going to switch to my phone

7:12

okay and see if this works switch to my camera okay

7:19

um so uh we’ll focus through how uh

7:24

kind of a general setup and then uh uh i’ll touch on a few things as we go so

7:29

as i say and i’m gonna the awkward part of this is i’m set up

7:35

in my dining room

7:41

so i guess the first key point is to try to find a location that is of value to you in terms of

7:48

where you can place your artwork ideally some are fairly clean so i’ve kind of set up

7:54

three little stations here uh with ostensibly three pieces of art

7:59

um including a teddy bear which is standing in for a sculpture at this point uh

8:04

and uh the key point i would say in when you are trying to shoot stuff is try to find

8:10

somewhere as clean as you can for your distractions

8:16

the goal ideally with artwork documentation is to make sure the artwork really stands out in a very

8:21

clean environment so we don’t want paint splatters on the wall holes in the

8:27

wall if we can avoid it electrical outlets all that stuff can be edited out after

8:32

the fact but it also takes a lot of time to do that in so the cleaner you can keep it the better

8:40

so a nice blank wall for 2d work and then if you’re doing 3d work

8:46

a very easy improvisation is a couple of inexpensive stands that you can get off of amazon

8:52

and a piece of white paper the white paper is called seamless uh it’s relatively inexpensive

8:59

uh you can get it from any of the major camera stores uh vistech or mcmean in particular

9:05

and a roll of four foot wide by about 30 feet is around 45 dollars

9:12

it’s generally one use it gets dirty and you don’t want to have to photoshop all the debris

9:17

but extremely useful in creating a very clean environment to play sculpture

9:23

in so that’s the key idea around location

9:29

the next thing i want to touch on with it is lighting so i’ve

9:35

set up some very inexpensive lights uh these are

9:40

kind of pot reflectors again not that expensive

9:45

um and i’ve put led bulbs inside that i got from the dollar store the brighter the bulbs you can get the

9:52

better um so these are 100 watt

9:57

equivalent led bulbs oh i’ll free my lights

10:02

there we go okay um

10:08

the brighter the better in general the value in using these reflectors uh and again these are the sort of

10:14

things you can get on on amazon relatively inexpensively

10:19

the value of the reflector is it will concentrate some of that light and and put it more focused on the artwork

10:27

the other improvisation i’ve added is to diffuse the lightning assembly so

10:32

if we don’t have a diffuser apologize for your zoom level

10:38

um that wings a little awkward

10:45

if i take the reflect the the diffuser off of this i get very hard shadows as you can

10:51

kind of zoom in here if we have some kind of diffusion on it

11:11

sorry everybody um with some sort of diffusion that softens

11:16

the shadows out and and kind of uh evens things to some extent

11:23

uh and in this case again keeping in mind that i’m assuming everybody is not running out to buy a professional photo

11:30

gear i’m just using i literally just use parchment paper and a couple of uh

11:35

binder clips to create that diffusion so it’s possible to set set up a fairly

11:44

reasonable shooting environment without spending a ton of money

11:51

so one other thing i’ll mention about the lighting as well in terms of where

11:56

you’re shooting the ideal case

12:03

in this instance my dining room is not a great shooting environment especially because i’ve got windows all

12:09

over the place that are bringing in sunlight so if i really had to document work that

12:14

was critical in this environment i would be looking to

12:20

either completely block out the windows so that i can fully control the sunlight coming in

12:27

or wait until uh dusk twilight later so i’m not getting a lot of sun coming in and i can

12:33

just rely on my own lighting

12:40

okay in terms of setting up your lights uh the

12:45

the long standard i’m just gonna back this up a little bit

12:51

the usual standard for work that is 2d and very flat

12:56

is to set the lights up roughly 45 to each side and equidistant

13:04

this is especially true if you’re looking to cross close crop the work

13:10

uh so if i was documenting this piece

13:16

uh and my intention was to actually cut out the piece in the final photograph and not have any wall

13:23

then this sort of lighting setup tends to work really well because we can get a fairly even

13:29

distribution of light and we’re not worried about

13:35

what sort of shadows we’re getting cast by the work that being said if we do want shadows

13:43

which can be quite useful in terms of showing the depth of a piece then we may not want to put lights at

13:50

the sides we may actually want to rack them higher up so i’m going to

13:56

attempt to do this really quickly i’ll just put my phone down

14:05

so

14:29

okay so coming back to this so i’ve simply raised the legs up higher

14:35

again keeping it to the sides but by doing so i’ve got uh now looking at the work i’ve got some

14:41

sense of the shadow underneath it there’ll be two lesser shadows on each side

14:47

that won’t be as strong but the main one is the the shadow on the bottom

14:52

that kind of gives a sense of the work being in a space

14:58

the same idea applies especially to any kind of dimensional work that is on

15:04

the wall so paintings with impasto or relevant brush work or even if you

15:10

want to actually show texture in the canvas

15:15

then rocking the lights higher up can be quite helpful for that because you’ll cast shadows

15:22

downward on the work so here is our improvised

15:29

el paso piece so by having the the lights uh coming in from above

15:34

we will actually cast shadows downward and pick up some sense of the texture within the piece

15:40

uh by by lighting it from above and

15:46

again getting some feel of of dimensionality to it so

15:52

those are sort of the key takeaways i give in terms of setting up

15:58

your lights and i would encourage you when you do

16:04

set them up to experiment a bit with moving the lights around seeing where the shadows are going where

16:10

the highlights are going and being aware of how they affect the

16:17

work so conveniently with this black piece this is also a consideration

16:23

so black black paint black surfaces in particular tend to pick up a lot of

16:30

highlight so the blacks don’t stay black they become kind of shiny and dull

16:36

so this is also consideration once you’re trying to line these things up and we can see this a bit in

16:42

this arrangement as i move this light around i’m not getting

16:48

true blacks in there getting some reflection from the light so and blaine you know you can’t the people

16:55

i can’t see what you’re taking on your phone right now oh really yeah so you have to turn that

17:02

back on okay uh according to

17:07

my zoom i’m still doing that now i’m saying i’m not okay apologies

17:13

everybody i had sharing on

17:24

that’s fine now that’s perfect okay sorry everybody that uh

17:31

wonders of zoom technology so okay uh

17:36

i’ll try that again so you once you have the light set up

17:41

look at how the photo is going to work and then experiment with with moving the lights around to see how it actually

17:47

affects the piece so as i was trying to say here trying to show

17:53

with with black surfaces in particular or

17:58

anything with a lot of gloss like oil paints they will tend to pick up lights uh and

18:04

reflect them back in ways you may not expect so this piece

18:10

is fairly flat uh matte black but it still will reflect the lights

18:17

as as uh i move them around depending where the camera is placed and where the light is placed

18:23

so once you have some sets of things move those lights around and just see

18:29

where you can get to try to even things out

18:36

and i can only go so far in this demo and again also because i’ve got windows

18:42

in this room that are not covered they’re going to affect things a little bit too

18:47

so uh next thing i’m going to encourage you to do apart from the lighting now is in terms

18:54

of the actual shooting try as much try to pay as much attention

19:00

as you can to composition the goal is really to kind of keep things

19:07

nicely lined up and as square as you can especially if you’re working with

19:13

2d work like paintings or photographs that are already inherently rectangular

19:18

it would be nice if the photo is rectangular too i’ve seen a lot of work over the years a

19:24

lot of images over the years of paintings where if things are off perspective

19:30

like that is not a really flattering view of the work because it’s it’s rather distorted so

19:37

um try to line things up as best you can uh for this the having grid lines on

19:44

your camera turned on are quite helpful because it gives you a visual reference

19:49

to try to find those square square points so that when you do line it up

19:55

you can get things fairly straight and avoid having to do a lot of editing after the fact

20:07

um the next thing is like how much space to give to work

20:13

um this is where i’m keeping this this talk centered on

20:18

using smartphones just because my assumption is most people are not going to be running out to buy a camera to do this

20:24

um you you have to kind of keep in mind that that um [Music]

20:30

camera phones are designed for more so for taking pictures of people or groups of people

20:36

so the lenses tend to be quite wide and a bit distorted so you will have to get fairly close to

20:41

the work to keep it in frame and and not uh wasting a lot of space so

20:48

i could shoot it out from here i’ll get an image that would be fine to use and say social media

20:54

around webpages once i crop it but there’s a lot of wasted white space here

21:03

there’s no point in doing that i may as well bring it in nice and close i wouldn’t crop right into the work uh

21:10

when taking the photo i’d be kind of in this range

21:15

that gives me a bit of space to work with uh when i go to edit it

21:21

the other consideration with uh using cell phone cameras again because they’re

21:28

quite wide this is not so much an issue with 2d work

21:33

but with 3d work so we’ll use our improvised sculpture here

21:41

is that when you’re shooting with a cell phone camera because it is very wide it will distort the closer you get so

21:50

i have to be quite close to the bear to get it photographed in this way

21:56

so as the closer i get the more kind of visual distortion there is and on my phone if i actually switch to

22:02

the wide-angle lens um then that distortion gets quite

22:08

predominant so it’s just something to keep in mind

22:14

when shooting with a cell phone and the alternative of course is to zoom in

22:22

to try to reduce some of that the difficulty with zooming is zooming in with a cell phone is that the lenses

22:29

are not actually zooming it’s just the camera is cutting out part of the image

22:37

so i could zoom in a lot but as the more i zoom in the less resolution i will

22:43

actually have and uh the noisier uh the image is going to be in the end result

22:49

so my suggestion is don’t bother zooming in just use the the lens as it is

22:59

and more or less get what you can with it i suppose

23:06

okay uh one other thing i want to mention um i’m focusing very much on this document

23:13

individual artwork but something i see a lot is in terms of kind of wider pictures

23:20

uh we’ll just flip this so say i’m shooting a gallery installation

23:25

or an exhibition let’s say this is my my gallery

23:31

installation again really pay attention to perspective uh

23:37

as you’re shooting it it doesn’t take a whole lot but just kind of slowing down a little bit

23:43

and and watching for how you can get things nice and square

23:49

will do a lot to make the image look much more professional when you go to use it or submit it

23:57

so finding those vertical elements and keeping them truly vertical

24:03

uh really tends to make uh make an image stand out and just look a little more finished

24:11

okay uh sorry i’m probably zooming through a lot of stuff here but uh let’s see where

24:16

we’re at

24:22

okay in terms of actually taking the picture now um

24:28

again with with a cell phone you’re a little bit limited in terms of how much functionality you have

24:35

that being said most of them have some controls at this point so

24:41

[Music] the two things i really wanted to mention around that

24:46

is that cameras tend to be fooled quite a bit in terms of figuring out

24:53

what will make a good picture in terms of the exposure so

25:00

cameras will traditionally attempt to make everything an even gray tone so

25:06

in this scene it’s it’s the camera is assessing things trying to mix in this white stuff and this black

25:12

stuff and all the other elements and averaging them out to being what’s called 18 gray

25:20

now that approach tends to work really well for the majority of situations but if

25:27

you are working with things with a lot of black a lot of dark brown or conversely a lot of white

25:34

the camera will be a bit confused by that and so if i’m if i’m looking at documenting this work

25:41

all this black is actually starting to be pushed uh let’s we’ll kind of ignore this

25:46

reflection for the moment but some of the blacks are not really coming out as black they’re going to come out

25:52

starting to look more gray so let’s see if i can do it on here

25:58

so it’s worthwhile uh familiar familiarizing yourself a little bit with your camera camera controls

26:06

um and on this on my iphone i can actually force

26:11

the camera to adjust the exposure a little bit and try to get

26:17

the blacks looking a little more black again we’ve got this reflection issue i want to kind of clarify that or fix that

26:25

before i actually take the picture but assuming it was okay

26:30

i can adjust the exposure some to try to get the

26:36

tones looking more correct the flip side of this is if i was say doing an installation shot

26:44

at an exhibition most of this frame is now a white wall

26:50

and so the camera will be confused by all that white and it will try to push that

26:57

white into being a gray as well so in that instance i want to do the

27:03

opposite i want to over expose a bit that will make those whites more truly

27:09

white and less gray and also again save me some work after the fact in editing

27:17

so that that’s the key idea in terms of trying to

27:22

tweak the exposure if you if you feel you need to

27:31

okay one more thing i wanted to say about taking taking your actual photos

27:37

and that is that your camera can also be confused about what is an appropriate color

27:42

so if you are shooting close to something let’s say we go over

27:48

to this one let’s say i was taking this detail

27:56

of the work there’s a lot of yellow in this in this brass that may confuse the camera’s sense of

28:04

color and it may push the colors in the wrong direction that’s where the idea of white

28:10

balancing comes in so if you can include an element that is what you would consider truly white

28:18

that can be used after the fact to clean it up in editing so conveniently here we’ve got

28:25

some white wall which we treat as white if we didn’t have that let’s say i was going into this piece to do detail

28:34

i might want to consider including a very small element of white so in this

28:40

case i’m just using a piece of folded over fold it over office paper

28:46

if i include that in the frame just enough that i can i can see it i’ll

28:52

use that in editing later and then crop it out so it does reduce

28:57

things a little bit in terms of i’m gonna i’m gonna have to throw away part of the picture um but it will give me something that’s

29:04

truly white that i can reference later during the editing stage

29:10

uh to try to correct for color okay

29:16

if you get really serious about it you can move into using something more thorough

29:22

so something like this is a color chart these are standardized

29:27

and can be used to further reference correct colors

29:33

i wouldn’t necessarily encourage doing that off the bat it’s a much more involved process and

29:39

also not a cheap way to go those cards are now about 150 dollars a piece

29:44

but if you can at least use just a bit of white paper uh even that will help

29:51

correct colors quite a bit also the case to consider if you’re doing installation photography

29:59

larger exhibitions having some element of true white in the photo

30:04

will help you correct the colors later that’s very much an issue i find in a

30:11

lot of gallery settings where [Music] they have a mix of as we have here right now a mix of

30:18

windows a mix of different kinds of overhead lighting

30:24

some colors might have fluorescents and spotlights and natural light all of those lights have different forms

30:31

of color attached to them that will affect how the color of the work is rendered

30:38

so if you can get those white point references in the images you

30:44

can use that after the fact to sort of correct for things

30:53

okay that’s those were the key things that i i wanted to sort of rush through in terms of

31:00

setting up things to take pictures and a few points to consider in terms of using your phone to do so

31:08

i’m going to switch over i’m going to put this one down i’ll

31:13

switch over to my computer now

31:28

okay so let’s say we have a photo that we’ve we’ve now taken

31:35

um we’ve done what we can to try to correct things as as best we can in terms of

31:40

setting the lights up setting the work up uh using the settings in the camera

31:46

invariably there will be still be some tweaks to do after the fact

31:51

and that’s where having an editing process or what we call post-production workflow

31:56

can also be helpful just to again get images into their very final state

32:01

uh and and looking their absolute best and again to make the artwork uh stand out

32:06

its best uh as best it can so i’m gonna jump through in into uh

32:14

editing program let’s see how this will work now

32:26

okay i’m hoping everybody can see my screen now

32:38

right again zoom issues here

32:43

okay so this will be the cooking show example where uh i’ve sort of set something up uh previously

32:51

and we’ll just walk through uh trying to fix it a little bit um and i’m

32:57

going to do this in a program called affinity uh it’s a very inexpensive

33:02

uh replacement for photoshop i myself tend to work in photoshop lightroom capture one

33:12

these are more say professional level editing programs

33:17

but also more expensive so i wouldn’t encourage you to run out and buy these things

33:23

just to do a bit of documentation affinity on the other hand uh very expensive i think it’s 70 right now

33:29

and quite regularly they put it on sale for 35 another alternative that i just came

33:35

across is an online editor called photop uh that’s free

33:42

a very good uh knockoff as per as far as i can tell of what photoshop can do so

33:47

i’d encourage looking at those as options especially photo key being free

33:53

it’s a it’s a good way to go about things so let’s say we have this

33:59

uh this image of this artwork and we want to get it into its final

34:04

state to say send it off for submission or put it in a portfolio

34:11

i’m gonna jump through a few uh small things to do in here

34:16

that will just make it look that much better so it’s not bad right now but you’ll see

34:21

like it’s not quite square the edges there’s a little bit of distortion to it

34:27

uh it’s a little bit flat and dull it would be nice if we get it into a state that that makes it look a little

34:34

better so the first thing you’re going to do is sort of fix that

34:39

distortion that’s in here so in affinity we can

34:46

drag out the lines to see where things are at

34:59

so we can see by putting the straight lines that it is indeed not quite square

35:04

most photo editing tools will have some sort of distortion correction or spec

35:09

perspective correction tool um your phone will have that too

35:15

the phone ones tend to be a little bit limited uh if you need to i mean it’s if you don’t

35:20

have any other choice that’s a uh will help uh correct things but software

35:25

will you can go things uh take things much further so

35:31

in affinity they have a perspective tool in photoshop they have an edit distortion trans transform photo piece

35:38

is something similar and the idea is things you can grab corners

35:43

and just start to correct for sorry i don’t have the right thing for

35:50

selected there we go so we can

35:56

pull the corners into a shape that is actually square

36:11

seemed like a minor thing but if we go back to where it was to

36:17

where it’s corrected there is a visual difference that makes it uh just look that much better

36:23

uh and that more that much more finished

36:33

okay so i’ve got a perspective correction i’m going to throw in a couple other things

36:38

so i mentioned trying to to photograph uh something white in a scene

36:45

so you have a color reference point uh and again most tool most photo editing tools

36:52

will have some form of way to correct for the white balance

37:00

sorry i just have to find it in here now so if i

37:05

and again in infinity if i turn on the white balance tool in here i can go in and use something

37:13

to pick that what i want to treat as pure white and i’ll

37:19

say that the wall is my pure white and if i select that the tool will shift the colors to make

37:27

that selection be what is considered white if i’m not quite happy with it i’ve got

37:33

ways of kind of moving the color around

37:39

to get something that i’m happier with and

37:44

let’s say that is uh where i want to make it as what i consider true white that little change is not big but again

37:52

it will push all the other colors within the artwork to be

37:57

closer to what they really are i will say one of the big difficulties with

38:03

photographic artwork is color reproduction is very tricky

38:08

do keep that in mind as you look at your work what you see on your phone screen versus what is on the wall

38:15

or on a plinth will not necessarily match up and going from your phone to your

38:21

computer may not match up and going from your computer to say a catalog or book will not necessarily match up that whole workflow

38:28

is it tends to be very complicated and very involved and [Music]

38:33

well beyond what we can get into today so you have to just kind of use

38:40

little tricks as best you can and so the white balance is one way to do that to at least get things closer to what they

38:45

what they are i will i’d also mention just to keep in

38:50

mind as well that uh you don’t know what other people are looking at in terms of when they look at your heart on their

38:57

screen what state they’re screening it is in how old it is if it’s too bright or not

39:02

to not bright enough now a lot of factors that will go into affecting how things look um

39:09

but we’ll do the best we can so so we have a

39:15

distortion correction we have a white balance correction

39:21

we’ll also add in an exposure correction for this one so the whites aren’t bad but they’re not

39:28

white white uh and again this is a problem with the camera may choose to

39:34

uh underexpose or over expose compared to what’s actually occurring in the scene

39:41

so i’m just going to add in another element here an exposure adjustment

39:47

to brighten things up a little bit okay that’s making things pop a little

39:52

nicer so the whites are actually looking more white

39:59

uh you can take this further and this is getting

40:05

a little more advanced sorry i have to do a couple little clicks here

40:15

so we’ve we’ve brought the white up here closer to what we’re going to consider a true

40:21

white we don’t want to go overboard with that white

40:26

but we do want to make it brighter but because of the way it was lit with with the lights up high this white

40:32

is more white than the bottom white it’s the bottom white still looking a bit gray

40:39

so we can get into adding things like a little more exposure adjustment

40:46

where we may want to brighten it up a bit more but

40:53

we don’t want all of it p2 white so we add something called a mask

41:08

oh sorry i did that the wrong direction i want the that to be on the bottom

41:14

so if we turn this off and on we can see that the bottom part of the picture is getting brighter and the top part is being left alone

41:21

i will go into the details of that is just something that if you want to get really picky about

41:26

how even your lighting is understanding things like exposure adjustments and

41:33

particularly masking or gradient tools are super helpful for

41:38

taking that extra step and i’ll throw one more thing into here

41:45

on this image we can add other things like

41:52

let’s say a level and a level can be used to

41:58

shift uh the highlights and the and the darks around so i’m just going to add this level

42:04

adjustment in that will push the blacks into being more black

42:12

so all told we had our original image and then all these other things we’ve thrown on top

42:20

and that is getting fairly close to uh what the artwork

42:26

looks like more or less one last thing i’d suggest too is cropping

42:32

things after the fact don’t just stick with whatever shape your your camera gives you

42:39

if the work is square then crop it to being square

42:46

so it actually kind of matches and again it has that more

42:51

sort of finished look to it okay

42:56

i think that’s more or less what i wanted to cover today

43:05

okay i was very rushed i i apologize if i’ve

43:10

kind of jumped over a lot of stuff too quickly for anybody but hopefully we can address some of those things in the

43:15

q a yeah definitely uh chris do you want to come back on the screen and we can start the q a

43:24

great well thank you so much for that lovely presentation i’m just going to uh remind everyone to put their questions

43:30

in the chat or in the q a function

43:35

i don’t see anything just yet so we’ll just give everyone a second

43:45

oh blaine somebody had a question about whether you should be saving in raw or

43:50

you’re working in jpeg why were you working in when you were doing these images

43:55

uh so when i’m shooting uh professionally i’m shooting everything in raw and if you have a camera capable

44:02

of shooting in raw i would encourage you to do so the uh ideal aspect to raw format is it

44:09

will save it saves exactly what the camera sees uh the downside of that process is you

44:14

have to take those raw files and then actually edit them after the fact so it’s there’s more work involved but

44:20

it gives you the best quality result to work with

44:25

the downside with shooting in say jpeg setting on on a

44:31

dedicated camera is that tends to shift a lot of the decision making in

44:37

terms of color exposure and whatnot uh is made in the camera the camera is making the

44:42

decisions for you and then it is saving it out in a way that is more

44:47

difficult to correct for after the fact if you need to so the raw version lets you just take

44:54

more or less the raw light so to speak that was recorded and then you go

45:00

through and make all the changes after the fact as much as you want so there’s a there is a key advantage in that but

45:05

it is more involved as a process

45:10

um you actually asked too in terms of what i was doing with the edit that picture was taken with my cell

45:17

phone okay so that uh on apple they have something called the

45:23

heic format it’s kind of raw but kind of not there’s still a lot of decisions being made by

45:30

the by the phone in terms of how it’s recording things um so it’s not quite as flexible as a

45:35

true raw uh format as as you might like but that’s the sort of limitation you’re stuck with

45:42

in that case great i have a question from the chat

45:47

here it’s from um the question is when shooting art is it common to leave a background around the

45:53

image or edit so only the art piece is showing do you think is it up to personal preference or what do you think

46:00

uh it it varies a little bit um i’d say the majority of the time there is some

46:06

uh background allowed into it uh especially if the work is framed

46:12

uh it may be necessary to actually show what that form of framing is uh so it is it is common to leave some

46:19

band around it and my personal preferences usually leave a bit a bit of band and uh often i waited a little more

46:25

so it’s a bit more on the bottom to actually see the shadow because and that that shadow will give

46:30

you for 2d it could give you a sense of the depth of the work uh but you’re straight on so you don’t

46:37

otherwise you don’t get it the flip side is i just documented a

46:42

bunch of paintings in vancouver uh this past week um

46:47

and the canvases weren’t mounted uh all that great with those paintings so there’s a lot of

46:53

kind of raw edge which wasn’t i don’t think was the end well i know it wasn’t the intention of the artist to leave those raw edges in

46:59

they just had not had a chance to actually get to the framing stage with them um so in that case

47:07

i shot it as close as i could but still leaving a bit of room on the edges

47:13

during the photography and then in the editing stage they were close cropped

47:19

so it was only the painting there’s no wall in that case

47:25

yeah overall i’d say when you’re photographing do leave some space uh and

47:30

that space is a bit of a safety margin especially if things as a showing are not quite square

47:36

and you need to correct for some distortions if you have that uh safety margin in

47:43

there is a there is then room for the geometry to kind of shift around without losing any of the work in the process

47:49

okay fair enough chris do you have another question yeah blaine i’ve got a question from the chat

47:54

and that’s would you recommend the use of a tripod even when you’re using your cell phone

47:59

or uh do you yeah what would you suggest with tripods

48:06

um i would definitely recommend the tripod as much as you can and certainly i use a tripod all the

48:12

time um but i’m also not taking pictures with cell phones so a tripod for your cell

48:17

phone is is trickier to even define i guess there are ways of doing that with

48:23

uh cell phone holders but um yeah if you can figure out a way to to use a tripod if you are shooting on a

48:29

cell phone um do it and if you’re shooting on a regular camera definitely invest in a tripod

48:35

it is a major help uh in terms of just keeping the composition nice and clean

48:42

and again finding those straight lines and the straight verticals

48:47

a tripod is immeasurable in helping with that um and i’m i’m i’ve probably harped on this more than i

48:54

thought i did in the talk but uh i’m a big proponent of making sure things are

48:59

really square it really does go a long way in terms of making uh the image look

49:06

more professional and more finished if you just kind of correct for those distortions

49:11

i’ve seen a lot of submissions like sitting on juries and stuff over the years uh where things are just looking really

49:18

crooked and it just detracts from um the finished quality of what’s there so

49:24

do you have any recommendations on tripod sports cell phones uh no i’m sorry i don’t because i

49:30

as i say i don’t i don’t use my cell phone in that way so i’m not really sure what’s available okay no problem okay

49:38

so michael your question yeah i have a question here um it was any tips on

49:43

reflective work i.e gold leaf or metal surfaces and i might expand that to

49:48

maybe glass because that’s something that’s really common with fine art as well yes um

49:54

major headache frankly uh in terms of uh glazing is a is a big issue and then

50:01

any uh really shiny work uh or anything with gold leaf metallics uh mirror

50:08

those are all a challenge um the the best thing to suggest is try to

50:14

improvise something in those cases so when i’m photographing a lot of glazed work i actually have a full setup

50:21

uh that i will bring with me uh i shoot everything on on location i don’t have a studio so

50:28

when i go to shoot i’m basically bringing his studio with me if i am shooting glaze work then i’m

50:33

usually bringing a big blind with me and it’s uh like large fabric panels with stands and i actually set up a basically

50:40

set up a black backdrop that i’m poking my camera through to take the picture and then by doing so

50:48

that black environment is killing all the reflections in the

50:54

glazing with gold leaf

50:59

or any really shiny surface that’s a little bit more involved in

51:05

terms of figuring out how you want those reflections to work because if you set up a black

51:11

backing to shoot through for say gold leaf then the gold leaf doesn’t look gold anymore starts to look really

51:17

dark and brown so that gets more involved

51:22

oftentimes you may want to actually shoot through a white surface because then the white reflection on the gold

51:27

leaf will make it spark a little more uh or i actually often

51:33

combine situations so i will shoot it with lights in one place and through a

51:39

different blind within another and then actually combine those photos in editing to

51:44

kind of selectively capture the gold leaf elements that are reflective and then not the rest of the

51:50

image that maybe i didn’t want lit that way so that becomes more uh a much more involved editing process to

51:57

deal with those uh it is possible but as i say it’s a little more of a setup to deal

52:03

with that so my question is somebody has a

52:09

question about uh a digital slr lens what would you recommend if you’re shooting really

52:15

large 2d work what would you recommend uh

52:21

that’s a little tricky too uh it really depends on the camera uh the biggest factor is how much space you

52:27

have so uh it’s the further away you can get back from work the j the better in

52:33

general um if you have to be really close uh as i was trying to show with the the cell

52:40

phone camera uh if you’re using if you have to get really close then you are using a much

52:45

wider lens which also introduces more distortion and is more of a challenge

52:52

so if you have a space that you can back up in you can use a longer lens that is

52:58

less distorted and looks better in general um

53:04

that being said uh yeah it re it really a lot of it comes down to the camera and then situation so

53:11

i have about i think eight lenses in my kit that i will swap

53:17

as needed uh the one that i use the most is a 65 millimeter lens

53:22

that is a bit long but it is also very sharp uh and and

53:28

very little distortion in it if i’m working on a really big piece

53:33

uh then i will use maybe a 35 milliliter 35 millimeter lens um

53:39

because i may just not have the room to back up to see that whole thing and otherwise uh

53:46

the standard approach is to get a zoom lens that has some range

53:52

if if you are going to document a lot of work i would recommend investing a little

53:57

more in the quality of the lens so the downside with the really inexpensive

54:03

consumer lenses is that they tend to distort a lot more so

54:09

they’re very versatile they’re very inexpensive but there’s a reason that they’re very inexpensive and that is the

54:15

the quality of the glass in the lens is not as good it will tend to

54:20

introduce a lot more uh shape distortion especially as you get closer to something the edges will

54:27

curve a lot more and it’s it’s just more involved to kind of fix all that stuff later

54:33

yeah that makes a lot of sense i have a question about lighting here uh one from uh tammy and then a follow-up from julie

54:39

anyway any recommendations for better lights uh than the dollar store leds and

54:45

then julie uh would also like to add and wet bulb temperature warm white cool white or daylight so it’s a two-parter

54:53

okay the lighting again a little tricky there’s a huge

54:59

range of stuff that’s available the gold standard is to use strobes

55:08

not advocating for that i like i have about six thousand dollars in strobes that i use

55:13

between two locations strobes will give you the best color temperature the best rendition

55:21

will put out a lot of light so it gives you a lot of control

55:26

if you’re working i’d say if you if you have a sort of moderate budget then

55:32

you could get uh speed lights so or like flash heads um

55:38

again there’s lots of options on on amazon i’m not a i’m not trying to be a proponent for amazon but it’s very convenient for this kind of thing

55:44

nowadays so there is a lot of frankly chinese manufacturers that have

55:49

produced a lot of photo equipment lately i made it quite accessible online so

55:56

small speed lights flash heads are basically mini strobes they’ll give

56:01

you a lot of light uh and relatively good quality uh and not too expensive a little more involved

56:07

again in terms of how to set them up um barring that

56:14

uh bright white leds uh the brightest you can get uh the best the the better

56:20

because you want more light that you can then control uh if you’re stuck with a very low

56:26

amount of light harder to get uh decent photographs out of it

56:31

one other option um that i occasionally use for paintings is called a total light tota

56:38

total lights are are actually used as sort of fill lights in the movie industry but they can be convenient for

56:45

this kind of thing they’re super bright halogen lights um like 500 watt halogens so they’re

56:50

very bright the downside is they’re very hot um like you have to wear work gloves after

56:56

they’ve been on for a few minutes because they get so hot um and the color rendition of the halogen

57:02

lights is not as good strobes again is kind of the best standard

57:08

leads into the question about color temperature um daylight is sort of the the goal if you

57:15

can get it um uh but if if you’re white balancing things

57:23

it’s not as big an issue um it will the the color temperature does shift

57:29

shift the color that’s right the light temperature will shift the

57:35

colors a little bit in a work in terms of if you’re looking at something under yellow

57:41

lighting like warm lighting the colors will feel very different under daylight or on under cool light

57:48

you try to compensate compensate for that with the camera as best you can by white balancing or using a color

57:54

reference um but if you’re just buying lights then i would recommend getting daylight because that will be

58:00

um give you the truest rendition of the colors it may not be the colors that you see in the gallery again because

58:06

galleries have like there’s a crazy array of lighting that goes in galleries it’s it’s a kind of

58:12

accounting what is used in different spaces um sometimes in the same space but

58:19

yeah get daylight if you can great yeah thank you for answering that uh chris i think we have time for one

58:24

more question okay so this one michael is going to be okay uh and blaine this

58:29

is going to be one about commercial rates how you church how commercial photographers churches the question was

58:36

kind of like day rate or by piece how do you like to charge what’s best for you and what’s best for the artist wouldn’t

58:43

you if i was going to hire somebody um this is actually something that’s been

58:49

discussed um amongst a few of us who specialize in our documentation lately um

58:55

i have colleagues in vancouver that like we’ve we’ve focused on this uh

59:00

for years i’ve been doing this since 2006. so uh and it it has varied quite a bit it’s it’s not an easy question to answer

59:06

because we’re trying to kind of formalize things um i have traditionally worked by an hourly

59:12

rate um occasionally going into a day rate depending on the project

59:18

and if if you’re looking to do this uh on a long-term basis then i’d also

59:24

recommend putting in a minimum because if you’re if you’re walking into something that only takes you 15 minutes

59:30

to shoot it that’s great but you have to consider all of the overhead that goes on to that as well so

59:37

um yeah i typically charge by the hour for the photography and and then at a

59:42

separate rate for post production which is all the editing process which is usually

59:48

like for installation photography that’s often four times as long as the as the photography itself is just in the

59:53

editing so you have to allow for that too in charging

59:59

and then traditionally i’ve also extended a discount to artists like being an artist myself i understand that

1:00:05

um art is not a big money maker uh so i usually discount my rates a little bit for

1:00:10

what i’m shooting for an artist as opposed to an institution or something commercial but

1:00:16

um [Music] yeah and then in terms of what those rates should be that’s also uh an area of debate that uh

1:00:25

different people follow um

1:00:30

yeah not easy to answer i guess typical range nowadays is a is around 150 to 300

1:00:37

per hour for photography and then the editing process again

1:00:42

typical range is anywhere from about 50 to 150 an hour for the editing um

1:00:47

depending on the photographer and how they set up their price structure

1:00:52

thank you that that kind of gives us something to kind of go on uh i really think that

1:00:59

every time i watch you i do learn something more and i do learn a few more tricks of things that i’m not doing

1:01:05

right that i might be able to do that are kind of civil enough to do and i mean today you know using things like

1:01:11

the grids these sorts of things really really really help people on that kind of white balance something that’s so

1:01:17

easy to do on a little piece so i really appreciated this uh blame so thank you

1:01:23

very much michael do you have anything to add my pleasure thanks yeah no just thank you

1:01:29

so much blaine this is truly fantastic um and i also want to thank uh everyone

1:01:34

for being on this call and also a big shout out to chris and helen who is

1:01:39

behind the scenes uh so thank you so much everyone uh blaine do you have anything else you want to say

1:01:46

uh i’m just gonna throw it i i just uploaded the pdf again for anybody who might have missed it um uh yeah and if uh if you run into any

1:01:53

issues um feel free to contact me i’m happy to help so okay great well thank you again and i’ll

1:01:59

just remind people that uh carfax and the aga have been partnering on these fabulous professional development

1:02:05

workshops and if you have any suggestions for the next one you can just email me or put in the chat uh but

1:02:12

that’s it for us uh thank you again and good night thank you thanks everybody

No results found