I do quite a bit of documenting art for a whole host of different people. Designers, painters, sculptors etc, but, this has all been relatively self thought, through a few books and much trial and error.
At this point, I feel I have the capture side of things as refined as well as I can.
Heavy legs, solid geared head, canon 5dsr, shooting as close to 50mm as possible, (either the 50 1.2 or the 24-70 2.8 ii stopped down to f8 or f11)
I know to keep my horizontal's and verticals straight, I light paintings with 4 umbrella's at 45* from each corner, polarised flash for oil, handheld light meter to check balance, I use a colour monkey for my colour calibration, I shoot tethered to reduce shake and to double check focus.
The issue I have is when i take the digital file into LR, I am just forever 2nd guessing myself.
I take the raw file (to a calibrated screen), apply the colour monkey profile, correct WB from profile card and then.... I think wtf am I doing.
I am well able to edit photos but I just feel this flies in the face of all the quantifiable work I have done to get to this point. So far everything is calculated to get the best possible reproduction of the work, but now, from trial and error and trying to breath a bit of life into a jpg, I apply 2-5 on the contrast, possible drop my high's/whites by 2-5 bump my shadow a hair and reduce my blacks to make sure their deep, 3-5 on the vibrance, 2 on the saturation, a gentle S on the curves, a hair of sharpening and noise reduction and I apply LR's lens profiles.
Is there anyone that can chime in am I doing this right or wrong? In my circle of photographer peers/friends, Im really the only one doing this sort of work so have no one to ask.
