Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Shooting (Copying) Artwork Copyright © 2003 – 2009 Kenji Tachibana

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork Copying Artwork: Target Target can mean anything from printed text, graphics, art, photo, or even a computer screen. It can also mean original photo, painting, or drawing. For the ‘copyArt’ project, you’ll be shooting published images with text, which might be an ad or an article illustration. Examples to follow…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. This simple ‘stock shot’ image illustrated a trade magazine ad. It’s well thought out, designed, propped, staged, and lit.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Casting, wardrobe, and location was also well done. Finally, the body gestures work well for the composition and to tell the story.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. A simple triangle shape was used to organize the layout to guide model positions and direction to tell the story.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Line Screen: Printing artifact This enlarged section shows the CMYK dot pattern that make up the color image.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. 4-Color Process: Only four inks are used to create the illusion of full color by the printing industry. You’re also limited to the same Cyan-Magenta-Yellow– Black inks when you use your own inkjet printer. Its their relative mixture that creates all the other colors, values, and tones. Super blow up showing the color printing press pattern.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Translation: RGB to CMYK Your digital camera image is made up of Red-Green-Blue (RGB) colors. The camera and computer display is also based on RGB because they’re both based on directly seeing the light. When printing a digital image, it gets translated from RGB to CMYK because printing is based on seeing reflected light. RGB light based colors are naturally more vibrant than the reflected light based colors. It’s extremely difficult to translate the RGB into CMYK without losing vibrancy.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. CMYK Printing: There is no way that the final printed output will have the ‘zing’ of what appears on the light- based-image monitor. This makes choosing the right ink and paper combination very important. If you’re concerned with archival issues, expect both the ink and paper to cost more. The photographic output industry (labs and lab machines) is at a point where making-your-own- print has become questionable. I currently use my home-office printer for ‘testing’ purposes. Once my output is calibrated, I used a 1-hour lab to get my water proof and long lasting color prints.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Prints: Making your own Before embarking on ‘making your own’ you have some critical prep that's required: 1.Calibrated monitor. 2.Skill to identify screen image quality. 3.Calibrated printer. 4.Proper color and black ink. 5.Proper color paper (semi-mat photo). 6.Skill and method of identifying printed image quality. 7.And more…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Prints: Lab made Prints made by a Lab have many advantages. Advantage List: 1.One-Hour lab - faster. 2.Costco 1-Hr Lab - $1.49 cheaper 3.Quality assurance and predictability – same machine used throughout the US. 4.Archival and water proof..

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Prints: Must know Whether self or lab made, you’ll need to know some vital print characteristics such as: 1.Image size and shape – 8 x 10 or 8.5 x Border – borderless preferred 3.Margin, centered, maximum size, and more. 4.Costco ‘Special Instruction’ – Print Full Image..

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork Poster Detail: In order to show you the printing dot structure, I had to shoot a macro close up shot of a movie poster. Then, I had to blow up a tiny section of the macro shot to actually show you the printing dot pattern.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork NY Times Magazine: This ‘high production’ photo-illustration cover- shot was done by an advertising studio photographer working with his/her team. My educated guess is that the light-stream is either partly or fully ‘retouched’. This was a found shot at my neighborhood MONTLAKE library.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork Technique: Camera technique must be flawless. That means things like exposure, color, and corner to corner sharpness must be error free to allow the viewer to see the original object.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork NY Times: Advertising Another excellent story telling photo-illustration found in the NY Times Style Magazine for Holland America, a company that sells cruises.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork Technique: Exposure, WB, and focus is correct but the original art had a granular appearance.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Shooting Artwork Assignment or Challenge: This may only be shown to you for the sake of information. Although you’re welcome to do this as a bonus assignment. I can guarantee you that you’ll learn much more by doing than just reading or listening. Find an image that inspires you and try to recreate or, better yet, make it look better than the published version…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x End