Undiscovered subject: can you spot the spider? (click for larger image)

Yesterday I was climbing Blue Mountain, just west of Missoula, MT with our dog Angua. I ran into some great flowers and took a number of macro shots using extension tubes.

It wasn’t until I was doing post processing this morning that I found an added bonus. I was doing sharpness checks at 1:1 in Lightroom 3, and suddenly there was …. a dustspot? No, it was…. a spider! A very tiny one to be sure, hiding in the petals of the subject flower.

Can’t see it? Here it is close up and personal. In retrospect I was extremely lucky that it fell within the depth of field. I’ve shot bugs before, but I believe this is my smallest wildlife subject to date.

See him tucked away there, near the petal tips? (Click for larger image)

The author makes contact with Art at the Henry Gallery

No, this is not about great art shots of nature and/or abstraction. I love taking those, and I frequently spend my free hours seeking them out. But these days it’s tough paying the bills with art photos. On the other hand sculptors and painters often need photos of their Art for their business selling art. Press releases, catalogs, fliers, and small run reproduction needs all create a market for the agile, technically proficient photographer with the right gear. So if you can’t ORIGINATE the value chain by creating the original art, as a photographer you can at least still eat by JOINING the value chain!

Artists are not generally wealthy, and there is plenty of competition, so shooting art is not a way to make a LOT of money. But it IS a way to meet some creative people, to test your technical skills, and to have fun taking photos of people within their creative space. Who knows – it might also help cover your costs in slow times, or at least keep you from getting bored.

For me, shooting artwork breaks into two kinds of sessions: commercial recording gigs and creative celebrations. Recording gigs often don’t even directly involve the artist. It’s a straightforward job that pays $10 to $100 bucks for each delivered image depending upon quantity, complexity, and location. You’re expected to produce perfectly color balanced, proportionally correct, glare-free, spotless high resolution TIFF and JPEG images of the artwork – sometimes in your own studio, often elsewhere.

The real creative photography fun begins when the artist gets involved. (No, I’m NOT being sarcastic. Artists are great – or at least they can be – if their ego isn’t too big or too bruised.)

What makes them so much fun to work with? Artists understand, and live for, creation. They inherently support it. And once comfortable with you, many of them will join in and help you create and have fun while you work with their work.

Two pieces by west coast artist Gary Carpenter (at the Henry Museum) (Click for larger version)

I recently completed a second shoot in Seattle. This one started in the Henry Gallery at the University of Washington, and finished up in the artist’s studio. We spent about four hours and shot five very large pieces, plus we did a couple quick artist portraits with the work. Right now I’m in the middle of a shoot for a Missoula-based artist.

While both are fresh in my mind, I thought I’d pass along some of the challenges shooting artwork can pose, and the solutions that are bringing me some small successes, at least in the artists’ eyes (and when my customer is happy, I’m ecstatic!)

Next up: Cameras and Resolution – what features help? How many pixels are enough?
Followed by: Picking a lens; Lighting options, polarizing filters and white balances; Formats: Raw vs JPG; studio setup; field rigging; and finally – ‘Answering Questions’ and ‘Turning over the Camera’ – deciding what you are ‘really’ selling.

I started with GIMP several years ago, switched to Photoshop about 12 months ago when I got serious about doing professional photography again, and by last fall I finally had a general understanding of what I was doing.

I put together a page of before/after images to share with friends. My intent was showing what could be done by an apprentice-level Photoshop user. These images are a bit more, um, “creative” (aggressive? egregious?) than my routine Photoshop work, but they demonstrate some of the cool “stuff” that you can make happen in a photo using digital manipulation — without too much expertise.

You can view the samples by going HERE – B4nDaftr – Photoshop Fun>. (It opens in a new tab, so you can just close it when finished.)

Comments? Suggestions? I’d love to hear from you, either by email, or in comments here on the blog.

Best,
Art

Monday and Tuesday we had 9 inches of fresh spring powder snow in the mountains around Missoula, so Wednesday morning I headed for Snowbowl, our local ski area.

I enjoy winter photography as much as the skiing, so I took along my 20D, fitted with an 18-200 zoom. I like getting back into the silence of the woods and photographing the peace and serenity of snow, trees, and blue sky.

Air time

Riding up the chairlift I have fun catching skiers as they cruise down the mountain. I was using the “motor drive” on my 20D, when on a whim I decided to turn it on the scenery.

I’ve played with stereo photography before, and I idly wondered if I could create a stereo pair using the chairlift’s constant  movement to “offset” my images appropriately for stereo viewing. I braced myself and fired off two quick images. I didn’t expect much, and forgot about the idea until I was reviewing the images. I’m really happy with the result. If you do that “cross-eyed stare” that brings two images together, you get a very good stereo photo of Point Six as seen from the LaVelle Creek chairlift.

Point Six in Stereo

Since ski season is nearly over I’m wondering if this trick would work from a bicycle. And if I try it, how bad am I likely to end up hurting myself? Stay tuned….

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 – 1935)
Associate justice on the US Supreme Court (1902 –  1932).

Sometimes Holmes’ wonderful, elegant, and often elusive “simplicity on the other side of complexity” comes not from external system improvements, not from better technology, but from simple practice. You’ve experienced this. Remember riding a bicycle? Now remember learning to ride a bicycle?

• THEN: Balance – peddle – steer. So many variables – watch your feet. Look out for the curb! Not into the flowers! (Glance around. Did anyone see that? I don’t want to be laughed at…)
• NOW: You swing your leg over and go. (Or at least you did last time you rode a bike. How many years ago was that? No matter – your body will remember how…)

Consider the first 10,000 serious photos you take. So much complexity! ISO. Lens selection. Shutter speed. F-stop. Depth of field. Hyperfocal distance. Metering. Flash exposure compensation.  Composition…. Composition!? Even using the camera’s “automatic” setting, you feel lucky to get the subject in view, in focus, and well-lit more than half the time! And before you can view or share your images, there is the workflow: transfer from camera to computer. RAW vs JPEG? Please, I’m still figuring out where the files landed on my disk!  (Computer – what do you mean I’m “OUT OF HARD DRIVE SPACE”!?)

Layers in Photoshop or Gimp? Not until you’ve mastered cropping, white balance, tint, contrast, tone curves, levels, the menus and keyboard shortcuts, and …. and then, suddenly… you just understand. We say “It comes naturally.” But it didn’t. It came from practice. From repetition. You lost more than one great photo to a painful,  now seemingly stupid mistake.  A lot more. But that is ok – because back then you had no idea. And now? Now you just “know.” The right thing “just happens.”

Bikes. Photos. Life. It’s a lot less about better equipment and a lot more about mental memory, muscle memory, and creative memory. It’s not always easy. In fact, it’s hardly ever easy. Sometimes it’s impossible. At least it feels impossible today. But for that problem? Well, there is always more practice.

Then why not do it!? After all, you’ll have a better image because more if it will be in focus, right? Well, yes, you’ll have more DOF, but. . .  you won’t necessarily get a better photo. The smallest apertures on a lens rob you of that razor sharp edge detail that helps create a really stunning macro photograph. This sharpness is technically known as “acutance”.

Asparagus with Snap!

Why does the sharpness decrease with smaller f-stops? Because all lenses have a  “sweet spot”, an aperture at which they are sharpest. A number of variables determine this sweet spot, including diffraction around the edge of the iris, the design of the lens elements, and the physical realities of how light behaves.

You don’t have to be an optical engineer to find the sweet spot of your lens. You can easily find your lens’ sweet spot with one quick test. The first lens you test may take 20 minutes to get set up, figure out how to use your software, and walk through the comparisons. But after that, each lens you test will only take five or ten minutes, and you will be rewarded with sharper images every time you shoot.

Here’s how. Put your camera on a tripod, set up a very clear target, and take a series of pictures, one at each f-stop. Compare them and find the sharpest ones. The difference will probably startle you.

Would you like detailed instructions? Click HERE.

To get a PDF containing a free testing target, click HERE.

If you don’t have time to run the tests, but you’d like a rule of thumb, here it is:

• Most modern lenses have good acutance between f/5.8 and f/11, with the best often found at f/8 – f/11. (But testing is the only way to tell which f-stop is the sharpest for your lens on your camera.)

Being aware of the impact f-stop settings have on sharpness can have big payoffs in your photography!