Photographing gold

[dipietron]

I paint in egg tempera with watergilded gold and am having trouble photographing. I am familiar with Cyndij's techniques and have used similar processes with my oils etc. I am finding that the gold and varnishes produce intense glare which requires me to bounce the light off ceilings and white foam core. This is tricky and causes my photos to be too dark. Basically I cannot use direct light. I am looking to purchase photo umbrellas as a way to diffuse and soften the light. I would like any advice on umbrellas or other techniques that have worked well for photographing gold, especially larger work (my work varies from 25" to 50"). My equipment setup is a Canon Powershot A300 3.2 Meg, three halogen flood lights, and black felt backing. Thanks

-Nathan DiPietro

[Bert Congdon]

You don't need umbrellas. Put one light far right and one far left, no further out from the plane of the painting than 45%. To remove glare, use a piece of polarizing plastic in front of each light, both going exactly the same way. Place a polarizing filter on the camers going the other way. Place a light bulb in the scene, look through the lense and turn the filter until the highlights on the bulb disapear. By the way, polarizing only works on non-conductors. For the gold just make sure your lights are close enough to the plain of the art.

Bert

[dipietron]

Thankyou for the reply Bert. I am using a small digital camera with no optical zoom so I cannot attach a polarizing filter to it. Fortunantly I have been having success with the umbrellas by placing them close to the painting and placing the lights 5-8 feet back. This creates a softbox around the painting and softens the light wonderfully. Also allot of Photoshop helps. 8-)