The corner of her studio where Ria does the majority of her drawing and painting.

One of my favorite commissions is shooting an artist working in their studio. The best results are when an artist lets me come in for a couple hours when they are working on one or more pieces. We start out with more talking than shooting. Pretty soon  the artist forgets about the camera (not always easy when strobes are going off every few seconds) and I start to see both the Art and the Artist’s personality emerge.

The shots in this post are from a shoot I did last week with with Ria de Neeve, a Missoula-based artist who’s work you may have seen in my prior posts. (You can view some of Ria’s amazing paintings at her website: www.iamariver.org.)

The purpose of these shoots is to provide artists with professional images that look casual for gallery brochures, articles, and websites. (These candid images appear by permission of Ms. de Neeve. Click on any of these thumbnail images and view  a larger version.)

Her non-traditional tools yield amazing results

Ria uses plastic cards of several sizes as painting tools. This made for some interesting shots. (Shallow DOF helped here.)

Ria de Neeve using plastic affinity card to apply paint

I’m always on the lookout for good facial expressions. Posed photos are fine, but some of the most captivating Gallery books I’ve seen are based upon truly candid photos – where the Artist’s personality – be it stern or playful, or both – comes through. Several good opportunities occurred as Ria and I talked:

A phone call offered a chance to make use of a mirror I had been eyeing, but had so far had not been able to figure a way include in my composition:

We chat about Art in general, and muses in particular. Finishing her work with some paints, Ria turns to me “lets take a picture of my painty hands!” she says, thrusting them out. Her hands are below table level, and it takes me a couple seconds to readjust my camera for the reduced light. “Some people really like my feather tattoo,” she offers.  Peering through my viewfinder, I become one of them.

Ria's Feather tattoo - and painty hands

The feather design is Ria’s own design and artwork. She had it put on with WHITE tattoo ink. It looks a lot like a reverse suntan – and is a beautiful, delicate addition to her arm.

White Feather Tattoo

Today Ria is working on a series based on the Hebrew alphabet. Starting with pencil drawings, she is building collages. I get several good images of her working with scissors, cutting out a drawing:

Having spent just over an hour and taken about 400 frames, we agree we are done in the studio. Even though it is now noon with full sun and no clouds, I agree to attempt at least a couple outdoor photos. I quickly abandon all hope of getting good fill flash – the sun is too bright and we are both squinting like sun-blinded Eskimos. Ria suggests a shady spot she knows. Bingo!

And we are done! It was the kind of shoot photographers love – it took 90 minutes but it felt like 15. And we came away with over 100 publication-grade shots.

TO SEE RIA de NEEVE’s art you can visit her site at: www.iamariver.org

TECH NOTES -

CAMERA – Canon 5D Mark II.

LENSES: Canon 24-105 and Canon 50mm 1.4.

LIGHTING – Available light augmented with fill from a Canon 580EX speedlite (as a master) and two Canon 420EXs (as slaves). For beauty-light type shots I used a DIY three-strobe bracket with polyethylene  diffusers.

ISO/Shutter speed/F-stop: ISO indoors was usually 500. ISO Outdoors 320 and 640. Shutter speed ranged from 13th for blurred hand shots to 80-125th for most others.  f-stop was typically 2.0 for the 50 mm and 4.0 to 5.6 for the 24-105mm. This varied when I was creating implied sunlight with strobes.

MODE: Manual (I almost always shoot in manual for complete control.)

Because it is over 6 feet long, the large black painting to the left is (obviously) not a good candidate for full-sized reproduction via a DSLR image. (Bark ball and painting are shown with permission of the Artist, Gary Carpenter.)

My answer to their first question is a question: “How big a copy does your customer want to make, and do they wish to print it, or just show it on the web?” You’ve seen perfectly good images of artwork on the web that were taken with a 4 megapixel (or less) camera. However, you probably haven’t seen art prints of any size from that camera. (The answer to the other two questions – “Will people really pay?” and “How much?” are “Yes,” and “It depends…” (More on the last question in a future post.))

Let’s cut to the chase and do some quick calculations about camera resolution and what it means for final image size – both printed and web:

What really matters is pixels-per-inch (or centimeter) sent to the output device. Note that this is NOT the DOTS per inch your printer brags about, its PIXELS per inch, the little dots that make up the image.) For printing, you need to send at least 150 (bare minimum), and preferably 240-300 pixels per inch to a good quality printer to achieve crisp results. Over 300 DPI, and most observers aren’t going to be able to see it (and many printers won’t print it any clearer). For on-screen viewing (web, slide shows, conversion to video) you only need 72-96 DPI (dots per inch).  Here is a quick way to calculate how well your current camera meets your needs:

This 10"x12" painting by Ria de Neeve is an excellent candidate for limited edition reproduction from a digital image. (de Neeve paintings appear with permission of the artist.)

1)      Determine the number of pixels your camera records horizontally and vertically. (tip: check the EXIF info – FastStone and Irfanview are free programs that make this easy. Recent versions of Windows will also reveal this for JPG files, but not camera raw.) Round these dimensions down to the nearest 100.

2)      Divide each dimension by 150. The results are the LARGEST PRINT you can make and (probably) still have a satisfied customer.

3)      Divide by 300 to get the largest using “best resolution” techniques. (Yes, it’s half the size, or just one quarter the area of the 150 pixel version.)

Example:

Let’s use a Canon 20D, an older prosumer camera body now available for about $300-$400 used. It records a 2336×3504 pixel image. At 300 ppi you have 2300/300 = 7.6” and 3500/300 = 11.6. That is, you can make a very high quality reproduction up to about 8”x10”. Going to the lower quality limit of 150 ppi will get you to about 15”x22”. This assumes your artwork fits proportionally into the frame. Images with different proportions will obviously not fill the frame, resulting in a smaller maximum size in one dimension. Since you need SOME border, these sizes are a maximum.

Now Let’s talk about photographing work for screen display. Suddenly, your resolution needs are much MUCH lower. Like cameras, monitors work in pixels. And compared to camera sensors, monitors are small. Even a high res monitor (QSXGA spec) only has 2560×2048 pixels. So you can easily do full-screen images with an 8 meg camera, and even have some pixels available for cropping. For display purposes on commerce sites you are only displaying about 800×800 pixels, or 0.7 megapixels. So even a 4 megapixel camera is more than adequate!

Bottom line? You probably do NOT need to invest in a new, high resolution camera (Darn! There goes THAT excuse!)  BUT (aha, you knew a “but” was coming, didn’t you?) there are real, sometimes significant advantages to a better, more current technology camera body with a larger sensor. This is especially true if your current gear is a Point and Shoot camera (P&S) rather than a DSLR with interchangeable lenses.

These advantages include:

1)      All camera sensors  are NOT created equal. A Point-and-shoot camera with a 12 mp sensor  often will not take as sharp a photo as an 8 mp DSLR.

2)      Larger high quality prints. (A 21 megapixel 5D2 from canon has 5616 x3744 pixels. At 300 pixels per inch this yields a high resolution print size of 18” x 12”. (Since larger prints are typically viewed from further away, the 150 pixel per inch is likely to yield a very satisfactory result – this means a 36” x 24” print is quite feasible.)

3)      Newer sensors are (generally) better – creating less noise, clearer resolution, and truer color. (e.g. You get what you pay for.)

This detail was cropped from the same frame as the full sized image above. It shows the metallic sun and the brushstroke details well.

This detail required a second frame; even with a 21 megapixel camera there is insufficient resolution in a full-painting shot to show good detail in call-outs.

4)      The higher resolution image means a larger print size, and the ability to “grab” detailed callouts  from a single shot, rather than having to shoot each callout separately.

5)      Greater zooming depth: When using tools like Flash that let viewers zoom into a photo, higher resolution images gives you more zooming depth.

6)      More space in the frame:  With extra pixels you can include small color charts in the border area. This makes each image easy to calibrate, even if you change exposure parameters such as f/stop, shutter speed, and/or lighting. This is especially handy if you are shooting in natural light. Sunlight, even indirect, changes with passing clouds and the passage of time.

7)      The ability to work “tethered” – Newer cameras allow you to easily hook up to an external monitor, displaying your shoot “live,” making decisions about framing, focus, and depth of field much easier. (WARNING – Do NOT make color or exposure correction decisions based upon the art object’s appearance on an external monitor unless you’ve calibrated it – even then it may not reflect “truth” as it will appear in the captured RAW file.)

8)      Your results are also greatly affected by lens quality – something you can’t change on a P&S but which you can on a DSLR. It IS possible to take good web shots of artwork with a P&S camera. But P&S camera lenses are typically not designed for close copy work. Instead the camera’s designers focused on the user wanting good snapshots of people 5’ to 20’ away.

9)      If you have a P&S camera you may not have full manual control of the focus, f-stop, shutter speed, white balance, and image capture type (RAW vs JPEG).

For an excellent technical discussion of the details of sensor size, see Cambridge in Colour – Digital Camera Sensor Sizes.

To see more of Ria de Neeve’s artwork, visit her site at: www.iamariver.org

My thanks to both Ria de Neeve and Gary Carpenter for permission to reproduce their work here.

Now you have determined the limits of your camera body. Next time we’ll talk about Glass: Part III – Picking Lenses.

Are you inadvertently releasing your health care data to spammers?

Are you self-employed and using the web to look for health insurance you can afford? Be careful or you could get – or give – much more than you bargain for.

Self-employed means self-insured. Self-employed people (like me)  have no employer to pay – and hide from us – the true cost of our health insurance. We get to figure out where to get the $10,000 – $20,000 insurance costs each year for coverage that doesn’t kick in until you’ve spent that much out of pocket.

But this posting isn’t about how screwed up our health care system is – you know that already. It’s about people who I believe are taking advantage of people’s need to find health insurance they can afford.

In my own search for affordable health insurance I signed up for an email that promised to help me find lower cost health insurance by getting quotes from multiple Health Insurers in my area. The email came. It linked me to three OTHER companies that promise to do the leg work of actually getting the quotes. Since I’ve just had the usual large annual rate increase in my insurance (almost 20%) I decided to give one of these services a try.

First, they asked me to fill out demographic information about all members of my family and disclose any pre-existing conditions, plus provide some basic contact information.  At the bottom of the form was a check box to accept their terms of service.

As an IT executive I got in the habit of reading the fine print in contracts, ALL the fine print. Yes, it takes time, but it’s interesting, and sometimes surprising and enlightening to read the Terms of Service and Privacy Statements companies ask you to accept. For the most part, these are long, boring, paranoid, and generally benign – you simply agree that no matter how badly they mess up, they aren’t in any way responsible or liable. But for this health care insurance quoting service I found something interesting — and more than a bit worrisome — buried deep in their Terms of Service:

The personal profile information you submit to HPQ remains your property, but by submitting that information to HPQ, you grant HPQ, the right to use that information for marketing purposes. HPQ may also use such information for content improvement and feedback purposes. We may sell the personal information that you supply to us and we may join together with other businesses to bring selected retail opportunities to our members. These businesses may include providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation. In addition, HPQ reserves the right to release current or past member information in the event HPQ believes that the membership is being or has been used in violation of the Rules or to commit unlawful acts, if the information is subpoenaed, if HPQ is sold or acquired, or when HPQ deems it necessary or appropriate. By agreeing to these terms, you hereby consent to disclosure of any record or communication to any Third Party when HPQ, in its sole discretion, determines the disclosure to be appropriate.

(Bold Emphasis added)

In other words, anything you tell them is not “private” in any way. They can use it to direct market you and your family, and not just for health care services, but for anything. And they can SELL YOUR INFORMATION. Their Terms of Service could just as well be called a “general full release statement.”  Check the box accepting their Terms of Service and your name, weight, age, marital status, zip, preexisting conditions — anything you give them about you, your spouse, your children — is now available to this company to sell as they see fit,  for any use.

Why would anyone accept terms like these? Probably because the whole thing is put in a wrapper on the website that looks a lot like the HIPAA forms you see at your doctor’s office. But those forms tell you how the doctor cannot disclose anything without your permission; just the opposite of this agreement.

Are these companies really in the business of getting you useful medical quotes? Or are they marketing list companies preying upon people’s need for affordable medical insurance to gather information for general marketing purposes? Since they don’t seem to think the HIPAA laws apply to them, I suspect they have little to do with health care, and everything to do with marketing.

Is their service worth the disclosure? Will they find someone who will sell you good insurance you can afford and save you big bucks on your Health Insurance? I doubt it, but I can’t tell you for sure if any useful quotes come from these companies… because I wouldn’t accept their Terms of Service. But I know what I suspect…

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.