Documentary filmmaker, Cristina McCandless, brought her moveable film setup to the house last Monday.  I was deeply humbled by what she has learned and how she has developed her skills in the past decade.  Bag upon bag of equipment - tripods, cords, camera, and litepanel - seemed to spring forth and consume the small space in which we proceeded to photograph the latest of Fred's rugs.  We made roughly one hundred test shots utilizing her litepanel on varying settings from indoor to daylight, full intensity, with and without my softbox lights, and with, without, and modified natural light.  After each option, I took the camera and downloaded the shots into the computer, where we were able to evaluate and make adjustments.  About half way through the morning I asked her if it always takes this long to put together her filming shoots and she said "Oh, yes.  Setting up the lights and room is the biggest part of the shoot."  We actually had to drape dark colored sheets over the windows to control the light.  Thank goodness for those and for gaffer's tape, which every good film crew has on hand in abundance.

Because of the Taos Fall Arts Festival rules concerning "pre-publication" of artwork, I cannot show certain rugs that were photographed, but I will start with a straight forward photograph of Rug 257, using my Nikon D5200 camera, with only natural light.  Because of the intensity of the natural light on the bottom half of the rug, the in-camera flash did not fire.  Without computer adjustment, the color is far too cool and off.

Rug 257 samples

In the photograph below, the two soft boxes were angled up at about 45 degrees, which obviously did not achieve the desired effect.  The top of the rug is too warm and the bottom too cool.

Rug 257 samples-2

Here is one of the final photographs I shot using a tripod and a self-timer.  Natural light from two windows was blocked.  The litePanel LED lights were on full intensity, 1/2  cool and 1/2 warm light sequence, and one of my softboxes filled the natural light we had removed because of shadows.  The colors are rich, and each different panel of the "cereza negra" red is, as in reality, different.

Rug 257 Thanks to Cristina for sharing some of her skills with me.  With luck, we'll be doing another session soon, and I will get to serve as an assistant on a shoot in the not-to-distant future.  And thanks to Fred for allowing us to utilize his weaving.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image@