Recently, I was hired by an underwater treasure hunter to photograph a
series of artifacts recovered from shipwrecks. In this tutorial, I'm
going to show you how I photographed a 500 year old bowl in two ways,
one clean and simple, the other dramatic and artful.
Antique Handling and Care
When dealing with objects that are very old, here are a few precautions to make sure you do not damage the artifact.
Work in temperature controlled environment (and no smoking!)
Always presume it is unique, irreplaceable, and fragile
Do not touch it until you know precisely what you are going to do and how, everything get's set up beforehand
Have extra hands on set to care for the item, but no more people than necessary
Wash your hands with soap and water (oils and natural secretions on skin can soil objects)
Avoid use of handwipes or lotion
Wear Cotton Gloves (Latex is also an option)
Do not wear anything that can catch on the object, including: bracelets, necklaces, rings, tags, cufflinks, etc.
No food or drinks near work area
Properly sandbag and tighten all stands in work area
When in doubt, have the artifact handled and cleaned by a professional
Depending on the value of the object, consider taking out insurance for the shoot
Being
hired to photograph a priceless artifact and then breaking on the shoot
won't only cost you the job (and a hit to your insurance), it'll ruin
your reputation. Depending on the material you are working, with take
all precautions and follow all special cleaning guidelines to the
letter.
High Key Product Lighting Setup
I
started by setting up a small coffee table next to the wall. Then I
taped up a piece of white butcher paper to the top of the wall and front
edge of the table to create a seamless backdrop. Next step was to set
up our key light. For a situation like this, where you need to do many
photos of many different objects in a short amount of time, start with a
lighting setup that works for most objects. You can alter alter as
needed for each object as you go. I put a light with a large softbox
horizontally directly over the shooting area.
Lights and Reflectors
Base
exposure with 1 light overhead, White Balance set to Flash. Set camera
settings to expose a black frame without the flash, so no ambient light
affects the exposure. Use a very small aperture to make sure the whole
bowl is sharp from front to back. Shot @ ISO 100, f/18, 1/200sec, 100mm
macro lensNext I added miniature versions of
V-flats, or white reflectors that stand on their own and wrap each
object with light. I cut two pieces of cardboard and covered each with
strips of white gaffer tape. This creates a reflector with a matte
finish that will evenly illuminate the objects and not create hard
reflections.
Cardboard reflectors with white gaff tape on sides. The problem with
this image is there is a gap between the reflector and white seamless.
Were this object reflective, there would be a dark shape reflected in
the object.
To make the front of the object as bright as possible, keep moving the
reflectors in until you can see them in the shot, then inch them out so
they have as much reflective capability as possible.
Perfectly Accurate Color
Product
photography demands accurate color rendition taht faithfully reproduces
the original object. Any color cast in your photo could affect the sale
or customer expectations, so you should always use a color checker. I
use the Color Checker Passport by X-Rite. Using
the color checker does two very important things. First, it allows you
to get perfect white balance. If you compare the tint of the paper from
the very first shot to this one there is a very slight shift from
"flash" white balance to "proper" white balance. Second, the checker
lets you create a calibrated profile for your camera that will
accurately represent all of the colors in a scene. I normally use the Adobe Standard
camera profile in my raw processing workflow, but the standard profile
lacks significant saturation: it's meant to be adjusted by eye to
recreate your subjectively pleasing impression of color in a scene. With the color checker you get objectively correct color without changing colour and saturation. This is the final composition: the white balance is set using the color checker, the camera profile is changed from Adobe Standard
to the profile set up by the color checker, and the front is
illuminated by the reflectors. All other lighting and camera settings
are the same.At this point, our basic setup is done.
Everything is properly exposed and entire object is in focus. We'll
touch up the background to make it perfectly white in the retouching
section below.
Dramatic Lighting Setup
Here's
the new setup. Instead of using an overhead light that "just works" for
all manner of things we want to highlight and accentuate the shape of
this particular piece. I moved my softbox to the left side, not aimed at
the bowl, but aimed across the bowl, pointed back towards the
right side of my camera so that the bowl is illuminated with the edge of
the light. This technique gives the light more of a wrapping effect,
avoids any specular highlights, and lessens the contrast from highlight
to shadows, while still giving a dynamic, graduated effect.
For
the set, I thought about what would make this feel rich and luxurious. I
imagined dark mahogany wood and old leather bound books. Since the bowl
is blue, I wanted to contrast it with a warm set. Warmth compliments
the blue of the bowl and makes the it pop off the page. I crumpled up a
brown table cloth (carefully moving all the waves and wrinkles so it
looked pleasing in camera) and set the bowl on the knife block from my
kitchen. Since we're no longer on the seamless, I just put a piece of
textured cardboard on the wall behind. To create a more interesting
background and spotlight the bowl a little, I put a light on the ground
aiming up at the cardboard. Here
is the reflector brought in close. Edge it back until we have the
desired highlight on the object. We can remove the reflector from the
final image by masking it out using a reference shot.Now
it's time to have a little fun. We need to make a final image that looks stunning. This bowl is worth more than
my car: we need to get that feeling across in the photo.
Post-Production
Let's
look at the ebay-style, object-on-white shot first. Using your favorite
selection tool in Adobe Photoshop, make a selection of the bowl. I
recommend drawing the outline with the pen tool, since the object has perfectly crisp edges. Invert (Crtl+Shift+I, Cmd+Shift+I on a mac) your selection so now you are looking at everything except the bowl and add a Curves adjustment layer (Image > Adjustments > Curves). Click on the eye dropper
with the white tip inside your curves panel. This will allows you to
set the white point by clicking in your image. Move your mouse to the
darkest edge of the backdrop paper, and click. It's
a small adjustment, but important. Now you have a perfectly white
background, and the image won't look weird with a gray edge when
displayed on a white page. Now
on to the artistic shot! Open both photos, our original reference image
(no reflector) and the image with the nice highlight. Copy paste one
into the other document (Ctrl+A to select the image, Ctrl+C to copy, switch to the other document, Ctrl+V to paste. Cmd+A, Cmd+C, Cmd+V
on a mac), so that each image is on their own layer, stacked on top of
each other. Since I shot on the tripod, there was absolutely no movement
of the camera or bowl between these shots, so all I had to do was
create an inverted layer mask (Alt-click on the layer mask icon, Option-click on a mac) and use a soft white brush to paint in the rim light and lighten the shadows. Our
bowl is perfect, but the rest needs some work. Create a new group, and
we'll make all the adjustments inside this group, then add a layer mask
around the bowl when we're done. I wanted everything to look like dark
wood, so I added a curves adjustment layer that just made the whole scene darker, giving it a fake dark wood look. This
looks pretty good, but this bowl is 500 years old. I want the scene to
look old, weathered, sophisticated even. I took a picture of muslin
fabric and put it on top in soft light blending mode. This added a more
organic texture than cardboard has and evened out some of the contrast. This
looks fantastic, but it's messing with the bowl. We don't want the bowl
to have any color or lighting adjustments that aren't perfectly
calibrated, nor do we want a texture. Since you added those two
adjustments into a group, you can add a mask to the group, cut out the bowl with the pen tool, and we're finished.
Choosing High-Key or Artistic Product Photography
The
client has a warehouse with millions of dollars worth of artifacts.
Some are insignificant pieces that go for as little as $100, others are
worth many thousands of dollars. All of the cheaper items should be
assembly lined through the white seamless, saving you time, and the
client money. If it takes 2 hours of your time to get this artistic
shot, then the artifact should be high enough in value that paying you
for those two hours is a tiny fraction of the greater sales price. These
product shots are much more involved for commercial products that can
be reproduced, so one photo sells millions of units. In the case of
ancient artifacts, one photo sells one unit.
I hope this was
helpful in showing you two different approaches for photographing
antique artifacts for sale. If you've had the chance to photograph
antiques, I'd love to hear your experience in the comments.
TDasany
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