SHOOTING IN A MUSEUM

Museums are challenging environments in which to photograph. Tripods are not allowed, backgrounds are busy, and the lighting is usually relatively dim. The museum in Ephesus, Turkey is superb. It contains artifacts found at the famous ruins. The resting warrior you see here (1st century A.D.) had a very distracting background, and I solved the problem by replacing it with black. I had to select the entire periphery of the artwork to separate it from the background, and then I used Edit > fill to put the black color there (you have to have black in the foreground box at the bottom of the tools palette in Photoshop).

Finally, I added 4% digital noise (Filter > noise > add noise) because otherwise the solid black won't look like it belongs there. It has to match the inherent digital noise in the photo. As a small image reproduced here, you won't see a difference. However, in a large print, it will be obvious.

FOLK DANCING

One of my favorite techniques when shooting dancers is to use a flash in conjunction with a long exposure. The result is an image similar to a double exposure where one of the pictures is blurred and the other one is sharp (from the flash). I photographed some Turkish dancers using this technique and liked the results. My shutter speed was 1/6th of a second.

CUT AND PASTE IN TURKEY

This stunning statue of Artemis was found at the Roman ruins of Ephesus in Turkey. I photographed it in a museum not far from the ruins, and although it looked beautiful indoors, I felt that it would also look great in an alcove that I photographed near the famous Library in the center of the archeological site.

Because the background behind the statue was fairly uniform in the museum, I was able to use the magic wand tool to select the background, and then using Select > inverse I grabbed the statue itself minus the background wall. I magnified the photo to 200% to examine the edge of the selection to make sure it was perfect, and in a few places I saw that it needed some work. I used the lasso tool in Photoshop to make minor corrections (adding or subtracting selected areas along the edge of the statue). To add to a selection, you must hold the shift key down, while to subtract from a selection, the alt (or option) key must be held down.

I then feathered the edge by one pixel (Select > modify > feather in CS4) to make the edge of the statue look natural in front of the stonework of the alcove. At that point I copied it to the clipboard (that temporary holding place for a single photo) with Edit > copy and pasted it into the niche using Edit > paste. Finally, I selected the move tool and moved the statue into place, and with Edit > transform > scale, I sized Artemis until I was pleased with the proportions.

This is probably how Artemis looked 2000 years ago, so I was very happy with the results.