(Part 1 of this article was published on this blog 9/25/2010 and can be found by scrolling down through past posts)

The Fussy Stuff

 Taking pictures is an exercise in compromise.  There are several variables to deal with; exposure time, aperture, film speed (ccd sensitivity), and the size (focal length) of one’s lens (zoomed in or out on a zoom lens).

The CCD

In the old film days one bought film of various speeds.  Faster film could record in dimmer light but the price was increased graininess.  The faster the film the grainier the image.  Same with the CCD in your digital camera.  The sensitivity can be adjusted using the ISO settings but again at the cost of graininess.

Shutter Speed

Exposure time is simply how long the shutter stays open.  Your camera probably has settings from 1/800 of a second to however long you want (time exposure).  Of course the longer the shutter is open the more light falls on the ccd.

Aperture

Measured in f-stops this is also a measure of how fast your lens is.  Simply put it is a measure of how big the hole is that the light comes through.  My Olympus goes from F2.8 to F11.  F2.8 is an opening about a half inch in diameter.  F11 is the size of a pencil lead.  These widths vary with the particular lens but you get the idea. The widest opening your lens can do is generally written right on the lens housing.

Focal Length

Strictly speaking the focal length is the length over which initially collimated rays of light are brought to focus*.  Uh…lets just say the longer the focal length the greater the magnification.  My 3x zoom lens can vary between wide angle (6.5mm) and portrait (19.5mm).  That should be written on the lens too.

Depth of Field

Learn to control your camera's depth of field to reduce backgrounds

Depth of field is greater in a wide angle lens than a telephoto.  Depth of field also increases as the shutter opening decreases.  Depth of field also increases with distance.  Unfortunately the smaller lenses that come with digital compact cameras have greater depth of field than their larger digital SLR cousins.  That doesn’t mean you can’t throw the background out of focus but it does mean you’ll have to work a little harder at it. To maximize the contrast between your sharply in focus sculpture and really blurry background you would the open the shutter all the way, extend the lens all the way out, get as close as you can to the work and still get it in the frame and then have that hedge you want to blur out as far away as possible.  If your piece is small using the macro setting will help throw the background out of focus.  The pumpkin on the left was shot with the lens at a wide setting and with a smaller aperture; f8 or so.  The pumpkin on the right was shot in aperture priority mode at a setting of f2.8 and the lens at maximum telephoto.  One can see how the background on the right is much less distracting. 

Light and Shadow

Harsh shadows are also distracting and fairly ugly to boot.  For outdoor shots it is recommended that one shoot on a cloudy day.  Light is then scattered across the entire sky making shadows much softer.  Our blog editor Jim Talt runs to get his camera when it’s foggy as that’s ideal conditions for taking outdoor jurying photos.  If you have to shoot in the sun some sort of reflector can bounce light into shadowy spots.  Foamcore works great as does a piece of cardboard covered with crinkly aluminum foil or go deluxe and cover one side of a piece of foam core with crinkly aluminum foil.

Indoors is a little trickier. I have a light box made of plastic pipe and connectors that I cover with white ripstop nylon (see the last issue or www.pnwsculptors.org/wordpress/).  Above it I have two clamp lights holding photoflood bulbs.  Hanging from the top rear pipe is a big piece of construction paper that drapes all the way to the front.  This serves as a seamless background.  As do clouds the ripstop scatters the light from the photofloods softening the shadows.  One can also use additional lights to either side to further fill in the shadows or even bounce light into the shadows using a piece of white foamcore or crinkly tinfoil.  Different effects can be found by moving the lights closer to or further away from the ripstop.

Putting it All Together

All right then.  Everyone will end up with a different methodology depending on how they want their piece to look.  Deeper shadows create drama.  Something lit from underneath looks evil.  Here’s the steps I take.

I set up the light box first.  Using plastic pipe and connectors I can vary the size of the box by using different lengths of pipe to accommodate any size piece.   If I’m not going to use side lighting I just hang the top part of the frame from the rafters.  The ripstop is the clamped to the frame so as to minimize wrinkles.  I hang two lights above the ripstop so they shine down at an angle from either side making sure the light will pass through the ripstop.  Note:  the further from the ripstop the light, the softer the shadows.  Once I hang the construction paper to the back I’m ready to place the piece to be shot.  Photographed that is.

Next I assemble the camera and tripod, extend the lens to full telephoto and frame the subject in the viewer.  Much fussing about occurs at this point to get just the right angle.  I put the camera in aperture priority mode and set the white balance to auto.  Note: there are both daylight and indoor type photofloods.  You may get better results using the daylight or incandescent settings.  Finally I set the camera to timer mode to prevent any vibration when the shutter releases.

In aperture priority mode I can manually change the aperture and the shutter speed will compensate.  With the lens wide open I minimize the depth of field and allow as much light to enter the lens as possible.  If I need more depth of field I stop down the lens to a smaller opening.  Next I turn on the photofloods and turn out the other lights.  Much fussing occurs here as well as only experimentation will produce good results.  For my purposes two lights above at 45 degrees shining through white ripstop serve well enough.  Often by the time I am done with adjustments I need too long an exposure to hand hold the camera. Hence the tripod.  That also means it’s necessary to use the timer as this will allow the camera to stop vibrating before the shutter releases.  Now I do a few test shots. Using the viewer I can get a rough idea of the result but generally I take the card, run upstairs and look at it on the computer.  Is the focus good, need more depth of field, is there a little bit of gunk on the background, angle not quite right, overexposed?  You’ll get a much better idea on your computer screen than you can on your camera’s LCD.  This is also good exercise as I keep doing this until I have it right.  Don’t forget to turn those photofloods off when you leave the room.  They get real hot.

So finally it all looks good.  Take several shots at slightly different exposures, change the angles a bit, change the lights.  Hold a piece of foamcore behind and above your piece to create a shadow on the background.  If everything is perfect I will use the opportunity to shoot a number of pieces and in fact I leave it set up all the time so I can use it at a moments notice.

Here’s a couple final notes.

Make sure your clamp lights have ceramic sockets.  Photofloods get real hot.

You can use plain old light bulbs in a pinch.  You will in that case be doing time exposures.

A white bed sheet will serve ok in place of white ripstop nylon.

Photofloods are available at camera stores

I got my white ripstop nylon at the Mill Ends store in SE Portland.

This went way longer than I expected.  Next, Part 3, I’ll discuss editing software and preparing images for submission.

 PART Three

Pixels and screens, Dots and printers, Cameras and pixels again

 Ten years ago if you were submitting images to an art show or gallery you would be sending slides.  It didn’t matter whether the image was for publicity or jurying.  There was only one format; a slide.   Now it matters.  Images for the web, jurying and for print all require different formats in terms of resolution, size and sometimes even file types.  There are basically three variables; pixels, dots and inches.  How these relate seems to have generated a lot of confusion not just among artists but those who ask for jury images.

 Its best to begin with the root of the problem: the pixel.  A pixel is “the smallest addressable picture element on a screen device” according to Wikipedia.  If you take a magnifying lens to your computer screen, you will see either little dots or little vertical lines.  There will be three; one red, one green and one blue arranged either in a triangle of dots or a square of vertical lines. These are sub-pixels.  Each set of three is one pixel.  If your computer is true color, (most are these days), the brightness of the individual sub-pixels can be varied such that each pixel can display one of 16.8 million colors.  If all three sub-pixels are all the way on you see white.  If the blue sub-pixel is off and the red and green are on equally you’ll see yellow.  (These are transmissive colors and they don’t mix the way paint does.)  To avoid excessive brain wear let’s think in terms of the square pixels.

 Your computer screen may be any size between 14″ (time for a new one) and 24″ (I want yours) measured diagonally.  The resolution of your screen is determined by how many pixels it displays across and down.  This is adjustable under “display settings”.  My monitor is about 23″ diagonally and just over 20.5 inches across.  The resolution is adjustable between 1920 px by 1080px and 800px by 600px.  I have it set at the max; 1920 x 1080. 

 Here’s the math part.  Since my screen is 20.5 inches across and there are 1920 pixels in that distance the resolution of my screen is:  1920 px divided by 20.5″ or 94 ppi (pixels per inch)  If I had it at the low setting of 800 across by 600 down then my screen resolution would be 800 divided by 20.5 inches or 30 ppi.  The higher the resolution the smaller the square or pixel. Visualize these little squares across your screen, be one with them. 

 Just for fun the new Apple I Pod and I Phone both have a remarkable screen resolution of 960 by 640.  At 3″ across that works out to 320 ppi. Wow.

 Your printer also has resolution settings.  These are in terms of dots per inch or dpi as your printer squirts dots not pixels.  Still, when it comes to size dots and pixels are equivalent.  Your settings when you print probably just say “Draft, Normal or Best”. “Best” usually means 300 or even 600 dpi in some printers. 

 Your camera also has resolution settings in terms of pixels.  My old Olympus has settings that go between 2048 px by 1536 px all the way down to 640 px by 480 px.  Pixels in this case are sort of like little buckets that collect photons but still, lets go with squares.  At 2048 by 1536 my camera has a total of 2048 x 1536 or 3,145,728 pixels.  That’s where the 3 Mega pixel claim on the front comes from.

 Here’s where it all comes together.  If I shoot a picture at 640 by 480 and look at it on my monitor without any zoom it will take up 640 of my 1920 horizontal pixels or 1/3 of my screen.  To find the size in inches I can divide the width of the image in pixels by the resolution of my monitor in pixels per inch.  In this case that’s 640 px divided by 94 px/inch or 6.8″ across.

 On a new I Pod with a resolution of 320 pixels per inch that image will be 640 divided by 320 or 2″ in width at normal size.

 On a printer set at 300 dpi that image will print at a size of 2.13″.

 In general, (the I Pod aside), an image destined for print must be much larger in terms of pixel dimension than one destined to be viewed on a screen.

 To sum up: the higher the resolution of your device the greater the number of pixels per given space and the smaller each individual pixel will be.  The image from your camera has a fixed number of pixels which will correspond exactly one to one to the pixels on your display device no matter what size they are.  The higher the resolution of the device the smaller a given image will appear.  I have explained this the hard way.  I know its basic stuff to many but I’m thinking knowing well what a pixel is will be helpful when we go to manipulate them.

 Next time I’ll go through the process of actually formatting and saving images for juries, galleries and Zapplication.  This requires software and if you don’t have a graphic program yet to take a look at Photoshop Elements and Corel Paintshop Pro.  Both can be had for around $50 and both are excellent pieces of software.  Photoshop Elements is often bundled with hardware such as scanners and printers.  If you see a scanner for $50 and it include Photoshop Elements well… The full version of Photoshop can be had at a steep discount if you are a teacher or taking classes for credit.  Picasa is an image editor from Google.  It does all that’s needed its simple to use and it’s free!

Next to the quality of the work itself nothing is going to do more for one’s career as a sculptor than the quality of the images one uses for submissions or an online web portfolio.  Having submitted images to juries for way too many years, (don’t even ask), and done web based portfolios for the last eight I’ve fallen into just about every pitfall there is.  Perhaps I can save the reader a little head banging and maybe some serious money.  In the coming articles I’ll cover the whole process from setting up a studio to proper submission format for Zapp.  Finally I’ll write a bit about website design.  For the first article I’ll cover the fun part.  That is, buying stuff cheap.

The Equipment

Professional photographers earn every penny.  It is a highly skilled occupation with an insanely high equipment budget.  For your premier pieces the professional is a great idea.  $90 an hour is not unreasonable.  You can also take excellent photos on your own with little if any pain to your pocketbook.  In fact a complete photo studio, (assuming you have a computer already) need not set you back more than $200, and that includes a good camera. 

The bare bones 'get it done' set-up is possible for less than $200

The Camera 

You will want a decent digital camera.  It should have a good sharp zoom lens and manual settings.  A new one will have a 10 megapixel ccd and set you back $200 to $500.  Here’s the neat thing though, 3 or 4 megapixels is ample for web work or for submitting images to a jury.  Find a good candidate on Craigslist and then Google the model number and read the reviews.  You can even download the manual to see if the camera fits your needs. In fact right now there is a Canon Powershot on Craigslist for the grand sum of $25.  It would do nicely. 

As sculptors you will be shooting 3d objects.  You will want to control what is in focus and what is not.  Usually you will want your piece in sharp focus and the background fuzzy.  For this you need to control depth of field or how much is in focus between the lens and infinity.  Controlling this precisely requires manual settings for aperture, (size of the lens opening), and shutter speed and a zoom lens.  A 3x zoom lens is sufficient.  You’ll want a shutter delay feature where the camera waits until you can get yourself into that family photo.  In a low light situation where a long exposure is required the very act of pressing the shutter button will blur the photo.  The shutter delay will give the camera time to stop vibrating.  So, your camera should have: a manual setting feature, a good 3x zoom lens, 3 megapixels or better and a shutter delay or self timer feature. 

If you already have a digital camera and it does not have manual settings it will probably do ok if it has a good lens and an aperture priority setting.  

The Tripod 

Unless you can stand very, very still you will need a tripod.  The Goodwill stores are awash in them.  A decent one will set you back $5 or $10 at the most.   Your camera has a threaded hole in the bottom.  There is a little quick release doodad that fits into the top of newer tripods that has a bolt that fits that hole.  Make sure the tripod you buy still has that little doodad with the bolt.  Older tripods just have the bolt and no doodad.  In either case make sure it’s pretty sturdy and extends to a decent height.  They make decent light stands too. 

The Lighting Setup 

Harsh shadows, unless you want them for special effect, tend to look pretty bad.  What the pros do that makes their pictures look so good is control the light and shadow very precisely.  They use remotely controlled high powered flash units, soft light boxes and reflectors of various kinds and sizes.  What can you do for $25? Quite a lot actually.

You will need:  3 clamp lights, 3 photo flood bulbs, light stands, (these can be anything you can attach a clamp light to),  enough pvc plumbing pipe and connectors to build a frame that can hold your pieces and enough white ripstop nylon to cover the frame top and two sides.  I use a light gray construction paper for the background and foamcore for both shading and reflecting light into dark spots. 

Pictured above  is my setup.  It’s downright ugly but it works.  The lights are just clamped to the basement rafters.  Usually I don’t even have the legs on the frame but just hang the top part from the rafters and drape the ripstop over it.  The ripstop softens the lights eliminating harsh shadows.  For the sample shot I held a piece of foamcore behind the piece to create a background shadow. 

Image Editing Software 

You will need to crop, resize, adjust exposure, contrast and color, and sharpen your images.  Photoshop Elements will

Gray construction paper background pops the bright colors of this piece

 do the job as will Paintshop Pro.  There are also gazillions of freeware programs to do the same.  Unfortunately most aren’t very good. Google has one called Picasa for both PC and Mac that is quite good and free to boot.  Download only from a trusted source of course.  Both Paintshop Pro and Photoshop Elements run about $60.  Paintshop Pro is probably a little better than Photoshop Elements. 

The full version of Photoshop is the holy grail.  If you are a student or a teacher you can get an 80% discount at the student bookstore.  Photoshop has a long learning curve but it is a medium in itself.  I mean what’s it worth to take that old family group shot and switch everyone’s heads around.  Little Bessie’s head on Uncle Fester?…priceless. Retail the price is astronomic but last I heard you don’t have to be a full time student to qualify for the student price but you do have to be taking a class for at least 3 credits.  Check with the bookstore before enrolling. 

George is the web person for Pacific NW Sculptors and has designed web based portfolios and websites for a number of NW artists.  He has been an avid photographer since 1969. 

He is a tight fisted scoundrel.

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I thought it would be fun to make time-lapse videos of the processes of creating art.  A potential buyer could view the video on YouTube showing the actual piece they are interested in during its creative processes. 

I investigated my cameras and found that none of them had a time lapse feature and after checking on the internet I found that almost no digital camera has the feature.  So I invented a device to attach to any digital camera to do it.

Time Lapse SteamPunk Machine intalled on Ken's digital camera

Click here Time Lapse Machine  to see what I designed and built and also watch me build it at time-lapse speed.     Please be patient with the intro, it doesn’t last that long and then the process begins.

Many of our clients have been shocked to discover that the rights they believed they had in their website URLs and designs were, in fact, owned by their website developers.

Unless an appropriate contract is entered into between your company and your website developer, you may find that the website designer your company hired to assist in purchasing a URL and establishing a web presence, rather than your company, owns the domain name. Further, it is important to realize that when an independent contractor is hired to design your company’s website, that independent contractor will own the copyright in the design unless you have a written agreement providing otherwise.

As you might imagine, problems can arise when your company desires to terminate its relationship with the website developer, since the website developer may then refuse to assign the URL to your company and may assert its copyright in the website design as well as any logos and other material developed by it for your company. This could result in your company being required to retain the services of the developer it no longer desires to work with, pay the website developer an exorbitant fee to purchase the rights you believed your company already owned, or start all over, with a new URL and website design, which could result in loss of goodwill and loss of sales.

It is, therefore, important for you to be sure that you have a written contract with your website developer making clear that your company owns the URL and will be listed as the registrant, and that the website designer is assigning your company all intellectual property rights in the website, including but not limited to the copyright. Please contact our firm if you need assistance with drafting such a contract, or reviewing a contract provided to you by the developer.

In a future issue, we will discuss some other important web-related legal doctrines.