Artist needs photography studio info

66bevbon · #1 10-27-2007, 11:48 AM

Hi photographers!
i am an artist and I use photographs to paint from. I would like to explore using a single light source in photographing still lifes as well as other subject matter. I like the effect of the play of light and shadow and the environment that many of the "Old Masters' created in their paintings. I have uploaded a couple of paintings that I did from National Geographic. (As these are copyrighted, they are for my own enjoyment and I cannot sell them.) The oil painting of "The Nun" has a single light source that comes from above and behind her, and my pastel, "Deep Thoughts" is of an Afghanistan woman looking through a window. In both cases, the single source lighting creates wonderful effects. In the "Candle Lit Still Life" watercolor I painted I wsn't able to accomplish a single light source and I think partly due to the fact that the walls are a light color in the diningroom. I ended up using lighting from a couple of sources.

What I am thinking is that perhaps I need to photograph in a dark space as starters. Perhaps i could paint my room downstairs (where I do most of my paintings) in a dark color. Am I on the right track? If the walls were dark brown or black, light would not be reflected off them and my subject matter could receive the full benefit of the single source light with no diffusion from reflected light.

I am a complete novice at photography but feel that I need to learn how to photograph in order to paint the way I would like to. The still life is just okay, but I feel that it would have been far more dramatic if the background were dark and the light came from one direction only.

I bought a wedding dress at "Goodwill" recently and would like to photograph someone in it, again using a single light source. It would not be a portrait of a smiling happy bride, instead a bride left at the alter. (One thought I had would to photograph her lying on the carpet in the wedding dress. Idea comes from "Izzie" in her ball gown in "Greys Anatomy" mourning the death of her love, "Denny". The wedding dress would be wonderful to paint, as it has lace on fine netting and an underskirt of taffeta.

I have a halogen work light which provides a strong light. Is "halogen" a good source of light to use in photography or do I need some other kind of light? (I used a lot of halogen lighting in homes as an Interior Designer and I really liked the effects! However, I don't know if that translates to photography.) My camera is an Olympus 550 UZ and the white balance choiced are sunny day, cloudy day, tungston light, flourescent 1 (daylight flourescent), flourescent 2 (neutral white flourescent), flourescent 3 (white flourescent mostly used in offices and "one touch white balance", "a more precise white balance than present white balance can provide. You can set and save the optimum white balance for the shooting conditions".
My guess is that I would want to use the "one touch white balance" option. The instructions say to point the camera at a sheet of white paper, positioning the paper so it fills the screen, making sure there are no shadows". I would say that the wedding dress is an off white in color. There are different colors of white paper. Should I use white paper that is closer to the color of the wedding dress, if possible?
Hopefully these are easy questions for a photographer and you don't mind advising me!
Thanks in advance!
Beverley
web site: www.beverleybonnerfineart.com

66bevbon · #2 10-27-2007, 11:54 AM

My photos didn't come through! Will post again! I added a photo of the skirt of the wedding dress. Sorry, I can't seem to get it to stay rotated!

**Oldthumbs** · #3 10-29-2007, 04:16 PM

I moved your post over the the Photo Equipment and Software forum from the main Photography forum page, which is essentially where we keep our archived files. Hopefully you will get more response here.

Rather than commit to painting a room a very dark color, just invest some money in some dark fabric or paper for a background. You can get the "professional" seamless background paper or just head down to the local Joann's and see what they have in the way of fabric. Then you can put it up and take it down as the need arises, and still have lighter colored walls that are easier to live and work in. Of course, you don't necessarily need dark walls or backgrounds to utilize strong directional lighting - just turn out all the other lights in the room. It will really depend on how directional your light source is.

Halogen lighting can work. Be careful with it because, as I'm sure you know, it can get very hot. You are correct that you would want to set your white balance to your custom lighting set-up. Your reference white should be what you consider "white" to be, which is what your camera will then consider to be white. If you set the white balance to the color of the off-white dress, the camera will consider off-white to be white. Probably not what you want.

I believe your camera has the option to save your images in RAW format. If you do this and have an image editor capable of making adjustments to RAW images (Photoshop will do this, as may software that came with your camera), then you can tweak your white balance and many other settings even after the fact. A RAW image is the data pretty much straight from the sensor, without having it "interpreted" by the camera's software, thereby giving you the freedom to make your own adjustments.

Okay - I'm done rambling for now.

Ray

(I rotated and re-uploaded your wedding dress image for you, too.)

66bevbon · #4 10-29-2007, 04:55 PM

Thank you very much, Ray for moving me to a better site as well as rotating the wedding dress! Also thanks for all your advice! I sure appreciate it! I have one other question re photography. I have uploaded two paintings that have black backgrounds. The original photos had these backgrounds. Also I by accident took one photo a number of years ago that had the same dark background. I like the effect and am wondering if there is a way to set the camera so it does that (by design rather than by accident!)
Thanks!
Beverley

**Oldthumbs** · #5 10-29-2007, 11:31 PM

The reason you got those dark backgrounds is because the lighting was rather high contrast and the camera set its exposure for the brightest part of the picture, which underexposed the background. If you find those kinds of conditions, you can duplicate the effect. I'm not sure on your camera, but on some (most?) cameras you can point your camera at one location, press the shutter part-way down to set the light metering and, while holding the shutter part-way down, recompose your picture and press the rest of the way to take the picture. What this allows you to do is point your camera at a brighter scene to set the exposure, which should underexpose your darker background. You can do the same thing without all the goofing around if your camera allows you to select certain areas of the scene for metering.

Clear as mud?

Ray

66bevbon · #6 10-30-2007, 06:23 AM

Yes, I think so. I suppose I could even point the camera at the bright sky first when I depress the button and then shoot the subject when I fully depress. Is that along the same line of reasoning? Thanks for the input!
Beverley

**Oldthumbs** · #7 10-30-2007, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 66bevbon

I suppose I could even point the camera at the bright sky first when I depress the button and then shoot the subject when I fully depress. Is that along the same line of reasoning?

Well, yes and no. It's the same concept, but if you point your camera at something much brighter than your subject, you will wind up also underexposing your subject.

Another thing you can do is take along a portable backdrop. A large piece of matte black foamcore board placed behind the subject will obviously give you a dark background. This is an easy way to isolate flowers from their noisy backgrounds.

Ray

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