Pixiq

There are many reasons to photograph at a gallery and one of the most important is if your work is on exhibition there. When you have a show you want photos for things like documentation, future publicity, display in your portfolio and to use on your web site. The problem you face is that taking photos in a gallery, (or a museum, or any interior space) is the mix of lighting sources which dismally include all of the following:

1)   daylight from windows

2)   overhead tungsten or fluorescent lights

3)   Halogen spotlights to illuminate the art. 

This is a hodge-podge of light with each source producing a different color of light. A digital camera’s White Balance control is designed to adjust the image file so that a white card in a scene records as a clean white--without any colorcast. However, White Balance does not work well when there are several light sources. For example, in a normal room setting with windows and table lamps, if the WB chooses to correct for the daylight coming in the windows, the area around the lamps will have a yellow-orange cast. Converesly if the WB chooses to balance for the lamps, then the daylight areas will be very blue. Sometimes it will choose a compromise setting and everything will look wrong to our eyes. 

A few months ago, I did some gallery photos at the “Galerie Anne Cros,” a contemporary art gallery and upon entering the gallery, encountered that world of mixed lighting. There were large windows on two sides, halogen spotlights illuminating the art, and various overhead tungsten light fixtures for general lighting. 

To photograph at the Galerie Anne Cros, my approach was first to set my camera ISO to a relatively high value, 400 or 800. Then I checked to make sure that the camera image stabilizer was turned on. I set the camera to shoot at its largest file size in .JPEG. (You can also use the .RAW file setting if you are familiar with it, but most of the time I use big. JPEGs.) I next set the exposure mode dial to P (programmed) although severaltime I use the M (manual) mode. Do not use Auto exposure mode because in low light, like agallery, it will force the flash to fire whether you want it to or not. And that adds another light source and another color to the problem. 

I use very wide-angle lenses (28mm and wider in 35mm equivalent) because they are important for getting photos of an entire interior space. I made my wide shots with a 24mm lens however the 28mm end of most zoom lenses will work too. However I changed to a moderate wide-angle and “normal” focal length lenses (35mm-60mm in 35mm equivalent) to photograph the artwork itself. Shooting in the gallery, my “mirrorless” camera, a Panasonic Lumix GF-1, came in handy. I use a mirrorless camera because it offers me “live view,” that is, I can see electronic images in the viewfinder and on the monitor. WhenI make adjustments to things like White Balance or Exposure Compensation, I can see their effect on the screen before I shoot. 

The next step was to open the White Balance menu page and click through each setting--from Auto to Daylight to Tungsten and so on. Literally, I watched the monitor with one eye and the scene I was about to photograph with the other. Thanks to my “mirrorless camera,” I could see pretty much how the selected White Balance compared to reality. Sometimes none of the standard WB options were right, so I went to the custom WB setting and adjusted the colors by hand, in tiny steps. Since the lighting of the art and the ambient light varied throughout the gallery, I was no surprise that I had to find several custom settings. Also, although the colors I got were good, I wasn't surprised to see colorcasts in shadow areas. That's just something you have to lvie with.    

Most galleries and interior spaces have white walls that tends to throw the camera’s exposure system off, often resulting in dark, gray photographs. To fix this I used the Exposure Compensation control (marked +/- on the camera body) and set it to +2/3 or +1 stop overexposure. Then I shot a few frames and checked the monitor to see which one made the walls look correctly bright. 

I know that this approach goes beyond simple “point and shoot” photography; however getting correct colors in photographs of interior spaces, and in particular, in an art gallery or museum  is the whole point, isn’t it?

PS: Always, as a courtesy, ask the gallery owner if you can take photos before you shoot.

To learn more about Galerie Anne Cros go to www.galerie-anne-cros.com.