I was speaking to a chap the other day, whose partner was an artist, and that
reminded me just how difficult it is to do justice to a painting using the
medium of photography.
If you are ever in an art gallery, even if you are allowed to
photograph the paintings on the wall, the result is a ‘blown out’ center and
dark edges. This is the same whether you are using the weeny on-board flash or a
hammer head flash that can light up the other side of the moon.
You will also have a problem with lenses, firstly to ensure
there is no ‘pin cushion’ effect, and then getting a wide enough lens to get all
the painting in, without having to go back 20 paces. This is not an easy
exercise.
Let’s deal with the lighting. You need to get flat,
featureless lighting, and that is why a flash is not the answer. The ideal
lighting is daylight, overcast and the painting placed so that it is at right
angles to the direction of the light. Unless you are photographing at mid day,
this means that you have to hold the painting at around 45 degrees from the
vertical. Don’t drop it! Mid day is also not a good idea, as you and the camera
will obscure much of the light falling on the painting, and you are back again
to uneven lighting.
Photographing during the day does mean you are not restricted
by how far away you can get from the canvas and you do get better results with a
‘portrait’ lens (say around 135 mm focal length) as you will get less distortion
at that focal length.
So to recap:
Don’t bother taking photographs of paintings in an art
gallery, even if allowed. Take the shots outside with flat light (open air shade
is good) and keep the camera on the same plane as the light source and at 90
degrees to the canvas.
There you go - that was easy.
Another very difficult subject is wine. (And you thought I
was going to say ‘children’ - also very difficult. If you do get asked to
photograph somebody’s child invent a contagious disease.)
Back to wine: Restaurateurs know that it is good to have a
photograph of the wine bottle in the menu, but nine times out of ten, the wine
does not look good or enticing. Red wines end up looking black and white wines
end up looking green. However, I can teach you in this column just how to get
over this problem.
The first item to remember is to turn off your flash, because
to photograph liquids in bottles front lighting is no good - it takes what we
call back lighting, so that the light passes through the bottle on the way to
the camera.
If you have an off-camera flash, this is the time to use it.
With your DSLR you can view all your photographs, and check that the flash burst
is actually going through the red wine in particular. I have seen us pour half
the wine out (into drinking glasses - which were used later of course) and top
up with water, to get the correct color of the wine. Naughty, I know, but it is
the end result that matters.
So what do you do if you haven’t got an off-camera flash?
Well, it is still possible to get a good photograph. What you have to do is get
the light source behind the wine. Window light can work well here and set the
camera exposure details for the front of the bottle. In this way, the back light
ends up two to three stops brighter than the front light and will penetrate the
wine in the bottle. Be ready to pour out some red wine again if it is still too
dark!
If needs be, you can put some foil on the back of the glass
to reflect some front light back through the wine.
Glasses of wine work exactly like the bottles, though you can
usually penetrate the wine in the glass without dilution.
So to recap:
Backlight all wine, and be prepared to dilute if the color is
still too dark.
