You have to know different ways to take a beautiful reference photograph of a still setup using the automatic camera or your phone. It is advisable to paint from life, but you have to know how to take excellent reference photographs if you are still unable to do that. You must ensure your photograph is not overexposed. You have to adjust your camera if it is a manual or automatic camera and learn ways of taking photos with good exposure. You can try this with one of your clients and paint by numbers (malen nach zahlen). The methods you can use to adjust your camera exposure are:
Tricking your camera
A camera analyzes the brightness of a scene to determine the exposure of a photograph. In other words, the camera determines the amount of light that a scene receives. However, the camera does not know the subject of your photography. If you have a still setup with a white object, the camera automatically decides on a particular exposure. However, if you maintain the light, remove the white exposure and replace it with a black object, the camera brightens the exposure to compensate even if the light is equal for both still life versions. As a result, the setup with a black object gets better exposure.
You have to try taking the correct exposure and start with the one you think is underexposed and slowly make the exposure brighter. Do not start with an overexposed image because you may take the exposure with too much brightness. That is one thing that you have to be careful with.
Now you may wonder how you can trick your camera into a changing exposure without interfering with the still set up since it is tough for a camera to determine the exposure you desire, and it tends to capture overexposed images. It can disappoint you, especially if your painting’s subject is the opposite of what the camera takes.
The trick you should apply is taking the bright object outside the still set up to influence the camera’s exposure without altering the setup. The number of objects that a camera sees determines the image’s exposure. When doing that, ensure you do not affect the still setup. You can use a shadowbox since it has a black cloth on its sides that prevent the light from the sides. Therefore, the shadowbox will prevent the trick from affecting the still setup.
If you do not have a shadowbox, ensure you block the trick object. You have to keep adding or removing the bright objects depending on the kind of exposure you want. If you are not sure of exposure, err on the darker side because it is better to have an underexposed than an overexposed photograph.
If you have a different camera or an iPhone, you can tap on different screen areas to take various parts of the scene before taking a photograph. If your camera has that feature and is enabled, tapping on the darker side of the image makes the exposure appear brighter.
