karen cooper - Blog: photos

Any Truth To The Rumor?

by Cooper on 4/14/2010 10:33:29 PMComment on this

Greetings,

Welcome to the Cooper studio, Jefferson, Iowa, where we are frustrated. With a grrrrrrrrr.

I am looking at a canvas as I type this note. It's a 40 x 40 inch canvas, and it's got a beautiful painting on it. I am so pleased with it. I wish I could show it to you. "Well, just take a picture and post it" you say. Grrrrr again, I have tried. And tried. And tried some more.

Is there any truth to the rumor that it is harder to photograph a larger canvas, and if yes, then why on earth why?

The painting has lots of yellows and lots of whites, but the camera seems to be enforcing a new rule that I can't have both of them at the same time. If you happened to be over at my portfolio page earlier, you'd have seen the version where I edited to try and get both---what a disaster that was. Then I edited to try and get the whites correct. Yes, I used both my photo program, and then later tried picnik on our host website. That result was up for a while, but I was so annoyed that those warm yellows were missing, that I took that photo off. So now, I've edited to get the yellows back in, didn't get them as sunny as they actually are on the canvas, but it makes me feel better. And I will probably spend time again tomorrow on the same issue. Dios Mio.

Many moons ago, in the days of 35mm Pentax's and real film, I painted batik paintings. The photo-color issues there were a constant struggle. A caring soul at University Camera in Iowa City, Iowa, finally took pity on me and tried to help. We actually talked with someone at Kodak, amazing, that, eh? Here's the rule it finally boiled down to: if the painting has more green, use the green film box---Fuji. If the painting has more yellow, use the yellow film box---Kodak. The colors used in batik are fiber reactive dyes, and they reacted funny in the camera as well.

Is it always really that simple and we just make it difficult? Am I overlooking something as obvious as green box/yellow box in my efforts to photograph this painting? Update at eleven, I guess.

Later, Cooper

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