Advanced Lighting Techniques for Mineral Photography.pdf

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Advanced Lighting Techniques

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Mineral photography

Wendell E. Wilson

The Mineralogical Record

4631 Paseo Tubutama

Tucson, AZ 85750

minrec@earthlink.net

Mineral photography at the master level requires, among other things, a

complete understanding and command of the way light interacts with

opaque, translucent and transparent specimens and their surrounding

environment. The photographer must take control of every aspect of this

interaction, carefully, patiently and intelligently manipulating each one

to serve his artistic vision and scientific sensibilities.

_____________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

Mineral photography at its highest level is an exact science in service of both art and

nature. On the one hand, the requirements of good scientific illustration must be met—that is, the

specimen must be depicted fully and accurately, without any distortion or compromise in

scientific integrity. On the other hand, an expertly crafted photograph is more than a mere

depiction of data; it comes alive with sparkle, drama, depth, and a fine-art feeling of aesthetic

quality. We must exclude from our discussion the contribution of innate artistic talent on the part

of the photographer because, necessary though this is, it cannot be taught. That said, master

mineral photographers all utilize an arsenal of techniques and thought processes which can indeed

be learned and can be adapted to each photographer’s own style and ability. Mastery of these

intellectual tools is generally the last skill to be developed along the learning curve from novice to

expert.

Following is an edited transcript of a slide-lecture I presented on this subject at the

16 th annual Rochester Mineralogical Symposium in 1989. That year there was a special

one-day seminar on mineral photography technique which was held before the start of the

main symposium program. The Rochester audience was attentive and quick to ask

questions whenever clarification was needed (those questions, and the answers, are included

here). This is, as far as I know, the first published description of many of these

photographic concepts.

Axis, Volume 1, Number 2 (2005) www.MineralogicalRecord.com

THE SET-UP

I’m going to pick up here where Eric Offermann left off in the preceding lecture, and go

into detail on a few aspects of lighting. You may, as photographers, have considered some of

these aspects on a subconscious level but may not have quantized them in your mind yet.

My basic set-up is very simple: I use a sheet of translucent white Plexiglas as a

background. Two Tensor lamps with acetate diffusers and black paper baffles are positioned

above the specimen to be photographed, casting a soft pool of light around the specimen. The

specimen is secured in position by a wad of silicone-based clay, and folded pieces of aluminum

foil and black paper are positioned around the specimen as needed to reflect or block light from

various directions. [See Suggestions for Photographers on this website for more information on

the basics of specimen photography.] I sometimes tell people that 50% of good mineral

photography consists of clay squashing and foil folding—getting the specimen positioned the way

you want it, and getting the reflectors to sit where you want them so as to provide the reflections

you’re looking for.

OLIVINE, Burma, 4.7 cm, Edward Tripp collection.

THE PILE OF BROKEN MIRRORS

Taking a photo of a lustrous, multi-faced crystal, as Joel Arem has said, can be compared to

taking a picture of a pile of broken mirrors. The crystal is going to show you, in little bits and

pieces, what it is seeing around the room. If the window is open, one of the little faces is sure to

show you a little blue reflection from the sky. If you’ve got a brass base on your lamp, one of

them is going to show a little yellow reflection that bounced off the brass base. So first of all you

have to isolate your specimen from all of the possible light sources in the room except the ones

you control. What remains after the extraneous sources have been removed, of course, is black

and gives no reflection. You must then engineer your controlled light sources to do all that is

necessary to yield a fully realized photo that doesn’t look overly artificial or awkward.

The specimen shown here is one of the world’s largest faceted olivines, from Burma. Like

all faceted stones and many crystals, it demonstrates the “pile of broken mirrors” concept and

how difficult it is to pick out just a few faces to define the whole shape. In this photo nine

different facets have been highlighted to some degree and yet major portions of the stone’s

forward surface, to say nothing of the rearward-facing facets, are concealed in darkness.

The special techniques needed for effectively photographing faceted stones are beyond the

scope of this talk, but suffice it to say that gemstone photography involves overcoming many of

the same problems facing the photographer of natural mineral specimens, especially lustrous,

transparent, colored crystals of any kind.

Axis, Volume 1, Number 2 (2005) www.MineralogicalRecord.com

Specimen’s-eye-view of a photographer’s lamp.

Shown here is a specimen’s-eye-view of the Tensor light bulb and its surrounding hood,

covered by a diffuser. What you are going to see on a face [positioned so as to reflect the light to

the camera] is some cut-out portion of this view, its size and shape depending on the size and

shape of the face. The bright center part, near the filament, is what you want to avoid because it

will give a reflection that is too bright—called a “burn-out.” The softer light from the

surrounding hood will be more useful for placing subtle reflections.

THE GRADATIONAL REFLECTION

Selecting an area of the light source that grades from brighter to dimmer will produce an

essential tool of the mineral photographer: the gradational reflection . This is basically an uneven

reflection which is fairly bright at one end or edge of the crystal face but then trails off gradually

to being very dim or dark at the other end. Gradational reflections lend depth and aesthetic

sensitivity to a face, and often show up very subtle surface features along the way. The gradation

can be linear (the intensity decreasing in equal increments along the way) or asymptotic

(decreasing rapidly at first and then more gradually). It seems like a simple thing, and it is, but

mastering the control of this type of reflection is essential to good mineral photography, and is

one skill which sets the expert apart from the amateur. Many, if not most, of the photos I’ll be

showing contain gradational reflections.

THE ARTISTIC COMPROMISE

The challenge for the photographer involves a fundamental trade-off. You have two

aspects of the specimen to depict, the surface shape and the interior. When you put a reflection

on one of the little faces, you’re blocking out something of the interior but you are helping to

show the shape of the surface. If neither of two adjacent faces has a reflection on it, you will be

able to see the interior clearly through them both, but you might not be able to make out the edge

where they meet. What you want to do is to define the overall shape of the entire crystal using

the minimum number and intensity of reflections.

When you set about defining a crystal, as a photographer you really begin to enter the realm

of the artist. You’re painting with light. You’re looking at the different shapes and you’re

saying, “I want to put a little reflection here, I want to put a little one there, I want to leave this

one open because the view through this particular window to the interior is particularly nice and I

want to save that” …you’re picking and choosing what you want to show. There is no way to

show everything all at once; you have to make a selection.

Axis, Volume 1, Number 2 (2005) www.MineralogicalRecord.com

COPPER, Houghton County, Michigan, 5.5 cm, Richard Kosnar collection.

COLORED REFLECTORS

This photo of some copper crystals from Michigan illustrates a fact that still-life painters

learn early on: that reflected light from opaque objects is colored whereas reflected light from

translucent to transparent objects is uncolored. You can see here that the reflected light from the

copper is copper-colored. If you try to paint a still life that includes a copper bowl, and you make

the reflected highlights white instead of copper-colored, it will look like a glazed copper-colored

ceramic bowl instead. It’s good to keep this in mind in mineral photography because it reminds

you not to let your reflections get so bright that they turn completely white.

GOLD, Eureka mine, California, 5.1 cm, Keith Proctor collection

It’s possible to fiddle with these colored reflections for photographic purposes, for

example, by using a yellow reflector to deepen the yellow color of a gold specimen (as shown

here). However, the results are usually not totally successful because you can’t get every part of

Axis, Volume 1, Number 2 (2005) www.MineralogicalRecord.com

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