I'm shooting paintings!

Last weekend, I had a full session photographing Sabri Idrus' (one of the best Malaysian Contemporary Artist) paintings for his upcoming exhibition in Johor Bharu at the end of this week. These photographs will be featured in his catalogue at the exhibition, and also kept for archiving purposes. When photographing art work for archival, colour accuracy and high level of detail needs to be captured in the photograph, at the highest resolution as possible. I wished I could shoot it with a 4"x5", but for this purpose, Sabri mentioned that a DLSR would be suffice, as long as the colours are right.

I'm honored to be awarded an assignment, a while ago to photograph at the complete works exhibited at the Young Contemporaries Awards 2006 at the National Art Gallery Malaysia (Wow! That was a while ago). It is my responsibility to photograph them in their natural, accurate colour. For this matter, I've used a target colour calibration card called QPCard and also Whibal. All colours are calibrated, and my monitors are also calibrated with Spyder3Elite.

At the time of photography, I haven't got the chance to find out what the titles of the span of work. I'll find out soon when the catalogue is out, but in the meantime, here they are. If you're interested in purchasing them, please contact Sabri Idrus directly at +(60)12-3828642 or email him at sabriidrus@gmail.com.

Here are some of Sabri's selected works I'd like to share.

Cheers!




One of the hardest bit in photographing fine art is the control of reflection. There are some parts you need the light to reflect, in order to illustrate the silver materials. I love this piece. :)


This painting might have more meaning on an indivual...*grin*


I took a shot with the colour target for calibration.


Just to be safe, I shot another frame using the whibal card for accurate white balance. Thanks to my faithful & reliable assistant, Kyrol for holdin' up the whibal card. Cheers mate!


Here's the final piece, all calibrated, all good to go.



Nice warm tones & textures


Sabri mentioned that this piece is one of the most difficult to produce, due to the sensitivity of the resin.


The white spots are silver (reflective).


In pink...





How do you illustrate a white painting? Here it is.