Four Tips for Selecting the Right Art

I’ve been researching sites and blogs that talk about selecting art, and I find it both notable and depressing that only the tiniest percentage even mention what is by far the most important rule about art.  The first consideration for most of them is color!  Sure, color is important.  But pick an artwork based on its color, and you’ll end up with a wall hanging that means nothing to you, and is disposable as soon as you replace your throw pillows.  Instead, here’s your first rule:

1. Purchase a piece that speaks about something that is significant to you.  Too many people simply pick something with a color that matches their curtains, and never get a chance to really live inside the piece.  For me, that's a waste of a good wall, and that's why I make art that is specific to the buyer.  If you own a '68 GTO, you've already put a great deal of time and money into it.  You should be able to bring that effort, appreciation and history inside your home or business.  It will truly be a representation of a piece of you, rather than something that doesn't speak about you or to you.  And don’t worry about colors.  If necessary, I’ll tint or radically change the colors to fit your existing decor. 
2. Size matters.  Size may not be important in some aspects of life, but it definitely is a deal-breaker for art.  If you have a big, blank wall, you don’t want a single piece that’s 10”x10” sitting in the middle of it.  By the same token, a small bedroom will not visually accept a work that covers the entire wall.  If you have multiple pieces on one wall, try not to have them look random in size or position.  They should look like you deliberately presented them that way, and the viewer should be able to pick up on that reasoning quickly.  The presence of the artwork should be prominent, but not overwhelming.  I can help you decide on the best size by projecting a sample onto the walls where the artwork will live.  This will answer all size and color questions very quickly, and will be less time-consuming and less expensive than test prints.
3. Framing is important – if you need it!  Since I work mostly on aluminum, many of my clients opt for no frame at all!  The aluminum is floated ½” away from the wall, giving a sleek, modern look that integrates easily with the surroundings.  But I also have several framing options, all of which share that same modern aesthetic for modern artwork.  Another option with my work is to back the piece with smoked or translucent colored acrylic, which not only serves as a visual frame, but is also still separated from it, highlighting the artwork even more.  A trend among photographers in the last decade or so has been to place a smallish photograph inside a huge frame, using an extremely large mat to separate the piece from the room and give it its own space.  I believe that if you need to separate the piece that much, it didn’t belong in that room in the first place.  If we decide on a framed print, I’ll encourage (but not demand) the use of a mat that’s three inches wide on each side at most.  You should be enjoying the artwork, not the mat!   
4. Light it!  Okay, so technically you’ve already selected art you care about if we’re already talking about lighting.  But it’s so important that it merits inclusion here.  The indirect or overhead lighting you already have is great for a living room or shop, but it won’t show off the art.  And showing it off, both to yourself and to your guests, is really the whole point.  It also adds a level of detail to the whole room that’s really striking.  The most common options are to use track lighting or a simple recessed aimable light.  Either option isn’t all that expensive, and you may even be able to do it yourself.  A Halogen bulb will be the most flattering.  Use a flood if the light is closer than about six or eight feet, and a spotlight if the light is farther away.  If I bring a projector to your location, I’ll also bring a quick example of how lighting will elevate the art of displaying art.

You’re not alone when it comes to being confused about art selection.  Don’t be afraid to ask questions – that’s what I’m here for!  If you’re not pleased with the art that’s in your home right now, I’d be willing to bet it’s because of point #1 above.  Let’s talk about how to change your outlook on art!

Medium-Sized Artwork for a Medium-Sized Wall.
(Headlight assembly of a Ferrari 458 Italia)

Large Artworks for Large Walls!
(Lexus parking lights and off-road
truck undercarriage, respectively, from SEMA)

How to Shoot Black Cars – The Advanced Shooter

Trick Number One:  Bracketing

Fair warning:  If you've never bracketed before, this post won’t give you a detailed step-by-step.  I’m assuming you've done it at least once already.

My favorite way to shoot cars is in direct sunlight.  That’s the exact opposite of what everyone will tell you in photo class.  They’ll say that an overcast day is best, to remove harsh shadows.  Well, that’s great for graduation pictures, but so many car finishes require a strong light to reflect properly that I’ll actually cancel on overcast days.  Most modern finishes have some degree of metallic or pearl additives, or candy undercoating.  The wonderful effects of those finishes are completely removed on overcast days.

But a gloss black car doesn't have any of those additives, so who cares?  Well, remember from the post How to Shoot Black Cars – The Basics that a black car is defined by its reflections.  Shoot on a cloudy day and your beautiful black coupe will look grey.

Yes, there will be harsh shadows in the sun.  So what?  We can fix that, and the result gives us the best of both worlds.  The technique is also useful in shows, where there is extremely high dynamic range present, because of shadows and light sources both existing in the same shot.

It’s easy to tell whether you need to bracket.  Take a properly exposed shot of the car, and look at the histogram.  If it hits both the right and the left sides, you’re losing information, and you need to bracket.  Leave your camera on the tripod, and take a minimum of four more shots – one minus half a step, one minus a full step, and +1/2 and +1 on the positive side also.  Now you have five shots, and most people would combine them in Photomatix (or a similar program) and be done with it.  But you can get a much better result by combining them with the gentlest settings in Photomatix, then bringing the result, and all the original shots, into a stack in Photoshop.  Start with the Photomatix result on top, and using a mask, paint away the portions that don’t look natural.  You’ll need to coordinate this removal with the appropriate shot beneath, masking off parts of that layer also to reveal different shots in different places.  This takes a lot of manual work, but the result is far superior to letting the computer do the work.  You’re trying to make the final shot look the same way your brain saw the car on location, which the computer is simply not capable of doing.  You’d be amazed at how much work your brain does when your eyes are open.  You can clearly see into the harsh shadows, and all the detail within.  No camera can yet do that, because your brain is doing tremendous amounts of post-processing work in real-time, often based on what you’re trying to concentrate on at any given moment.  Using this manual technique gives you an appreciation for all that power in your head. 

Trick Number Two:  Combining for Controlled Reflections

In my blog post How to Shoot Black Cars – The Basics, I told you to take your polarizer off, to maximize reflections.  The next step is to put it back on.  But you’re not going to take one shot of the car, like you would most cars.  This time, you’ll take multiple shots of the car with the polarizer in different positions.  A tripod is critical for this step, and it should be obvious that you would be using one all the time.  Take around five to eight shots, but no matter how many you take, make sure you get the entire range of cancellation from the polarizer.  Combine the shots later in Photoshop, using Lighten to stack each of the layers on top of each other.  Flatten that stack into a single layer.  Now, layer all the same shots together again, but this time use Darken as your layer command, and convert that stack into a second flattened layer.  Now you have one layer with all the reflections, and another layer with no reflections.  You might want to name them to keep them straight.  I usually just name them Light and Dark. 

Place the Light layer with all reflections above the Dark layer.  All you’ll see is the lighter layer.  Add a layer mask to the Light layer, and paint black on the mask over the places you want to lose the reflections.  Try the windshield, for example.  Other areas you might want to play with include tires, shiny floors and any interior cloth or leather that shows.  If the resulting effect is too dramatic, use grey to paint, instead of black.  That will leave 50% of the reflections.  You can also reduce the Opacity of the upper (light) layer, which will reduce the overall reflectivity of the car.  But be careful with this, as it’s easy to make the car look dull or dirty.  (You can also reverse the technique, putting the Dark layer on top, filling the layer with black, and then painting white over the portions you want to bring back.  If you’re familiar with layers, then you probably already thought of that.  Use whichever method feels best for you.)

So why go to all that trouble, you ask?  Why not just darken the parts I want to see darker?  Because the polarizer doesn't darken, it gets rid of reflections.  When you remove the reflective layer from the windshield, you reveal the interior of the car, not a dark windshield.  This combined shot would not be possible without the described technique.  You’ll also notice that not all reflections can be removed with a polarizer.  Direct lighting (reflections of light bulbs), and any reflection on chrome, will stay.  Getting rid of those will be a subject for another day.

You may be wondering how to get around having to do all that.  The answer is to control your environment, which is impossible at a car show, moderately possible on location, and required in a studio. 

The one thing you can control is your shot, which will give you more creativity.  If the car is on grass, maybe you want to see the grass in the reflection.  If the car’s on concrete, maybe you want to get really low so you don’t reflect the ugly floor.  Shoot around those two guys who won’t stop chatting by the fender, instead of waiting for them to leave.  Shoot from the windshield to the rear to avoid having to show the open hood.  Use a reflection of a person looking at the car, giving the shot an emotional touch.  Shoot from the front to keep away reflections of other cars.  Show the blue sky, to give the eye an opportunity to see why the top of a black car looks blue.  Find the angle that shows the most ceiling lights in the car.  Force yourself to FIND the good shots within the environment that’s presented to you!

Here's the first stack, containing all the shots that have full reflections.  This has had a light touch with Photomatix, but most of the effect you see is a result of leaving all the reflections in.

This is the second stack, containing only the dark portions.  Some people would leave the shot like this, and sometimes that would look good, but in this case I prefer the look of something in between the two extremes.  You can certainly tell the car is black, but it doesn't have a great deal of personality, which to me is a detriment.

Here's the final stack, manually edited to allow more brightness when needed, and to bring out the reflections in the hood.  This also helped the headlights, which have also been dodged and burned to maximize contrast.  A few reflections have been cloned out, like the branches in the leading fender.  Seams in the concrete were removed, but the eventual ground treatment rendered that moot.

The final shot, with the ground treated to complement the car, instead of fight it.  The car itself has not been changed from the final stack above.

How to Shoot Black Cars – The Basics

When you start to shoot various cars other than your own, you quickly discover that different colors photograph in different ways, and the automatic metering on your camera is easily fooled by different colors and types of finishes.  It can also be fooled by show lighting, resulting in a widely varying degree of success when shooting overall.

Generally speaking, the darker the car, the harder it is to photograph properly.  By far the most challenging common color is gloss black.  The reason for this is simple; your eye literally cannot see black, and neither can the camera.  Black is the absence of light and the absence of color.  You can’t use a flash directly on a black car, as it simply sucks up all the light, or if you try to reflect the flash off the car, you’ll see a small blob of light wherever the flash is reflected.

If we keep in mind that we can’t actually see black, then what is it we’re seeing when we look at the car?  Reflections.  A black object is defined by the way the reflections of the surroundings behave on its surface.  Those reflections tell us how glossy the surface is and what the shape of the object is, which is how we’re able to discern the fender lines and body curves.

Combine this with the desire of many photographers to eliminate or reduce reflections, and you get a recipe for rotten shots of black cars, with no vehicle definition and blown-out backgrounds.

So keep these steps in mind as a starter:

1. Embrace the reflections.  Find a decent location that will be interesting when reflected off the car.  The black will reflect color, like the blue of the sky, and that might be desirable.  It might even be desirable to catch the roof full of lights reflecting off the roof of the car at the car show.  But seeing the dumpster in the alley reflected on the door will not be good for a black car, whereas it wouldn’t have been a factor on a silver car.
2. Take your polarizer off!    It can be a magical tool for most cars, but for black it’s a much more subtle tool.  Remove it until you’re ready for more work (see the post How to Shoot Black Cars – The Advanced Shooter later on).
3. Let your camera expose for the car to start, then compensate by clicking your Exposure Compensation knob to -1 or -2.  That’s because the camera’s auto exposure tries to make the prevailing brightness “average,” or grey; so it will make a black car too bright, and a white car too dim if left to its own devices.  Better yet, put the camera in Manual and start experimenting with the exposure until you get it right.  You should be doing that anyway!
4. Put the flash away.  In addition to just seeing a dot of light on the car, you’ll also find in the final shot that the front of the car looks normal (or grey, depending on your metering), and the back is dim.  That’s because your flash cannot cover the entire car with an even light, causing the more distant portion to not be covered by the flash.  You’ll also see that the back of the car and anything behind it looks amber.  That’s because your flash is a different color than the lights during the show, giving you two different white balances.  Combine those two problems, and you can see why the flash is worse than useless.   So, you have a fancy Gary Fong softbox for your onboard flash?  Use it on a model, not at a car show.  It won’t do anything for your shots, except perhaps for interior shots.

Certainly these aren’t the only tips for shooting black cars, but I guarantee that you’ll end up with better shots if you use them.  Practice with them for a few shows, and you’ll find that your shooting will dramatically improve.  Then you can move on to How to Shoot Black Cars – The Advanced Shooter.