This model is being painted for the 2012 Clean-Slate Challenge, an attempt to paint all the forgotten models accrued over the years by an enthusiastic hobbyist.
I've wanted to paint this model for quite some time. It was the pose that sold it for me. There's only two types of personalities that would lend themselves to doing something like this: total inexperience, or total confidence bought on by a lifetime of battle. As this guy is quite literally the boss, I say it's the latter. I went so far as to purchase this model, but just never got around to actually painting it. Time to fix that.
Micro-Lesson: Photography
You could write a whole book on small-scale photography (in fact, several people have.) Today, we're just covering the basics that you should consider when you're getting your mini ready for it's internet debut. We spend many long hours working on our models, making sure every little detail is perfect; we owe it to ourselves to take the five minutes to make sure the photo reflects such careful attention to detail.
1. Give it a proper background
The shot below is fine for a Work-In-Progress (WIP) shot but not a finished one. All the junk laying around is distracting, not to mention unsightly. Clean things up with a simple piece of cloth. You don't need anything fancy, just a plane of neutral color to photograph your mini against. If you live near a store that sells fabric, you'll find you can buy "scraps" for cheap. You might even find some cool textures that you like the look of. This will not only clean up the photo, but reflect light evenly over the model. Speaking of light...
2. Light it
If you take nothing else away from this article, let it be this: you owe it to yourself to have good light when you work. What we're doing to our eyes working on this scale is downright criminal. The level of detail that is being cast in these models is impressive, but if you want to have half a chance of seeing and working with it, good light is essential.
That being said, brighter is not always better.
At some point, the quality of the light becomes more important than the amount. Having multiple light sources that use the same type of bulb and manufacturer can really help when it comes to fighting eye-strain.
For my setup, I use a pair of full-spectrum lamps, one to either side of my work. I keep them at different heights so I get the most light coverage no matter how I'm holding the model. It ensures that I can work for long periods of time comfortably, and that I don't miss details on my work. Additionally, there's a bonus to having high-quality lights to paint with...
You now also have high-quality lights to photograph with.
Full-spectrum lights eliminate the blue or orange tints you see in a lot of mini photos like the one above. They let the camera do its job with the least amount of built-in compensation. The less information the camera has to make up as it goes along, the better. That being said...
3. Use a decent camera
The camera I had been photographing with up until last week was originally purchased in 2002. I was able to get away with it due to the aforementioned background and lighting. More importantly, though, was the lens of my old camera. Megapixel count will not magically create quality, the only way you're going to get a good picture is with a good lens.
In the photo below, the 2002 camera does a good job with the image, but at full resolution you can see the details start to get a little fuzzy. Still, this is by all accounts a good picture that most people would be happy to have. Let's fast forward 10 years of technology.
You can see below just how much detail the new camera is capable of capturing. For your reference, this is a Nikon Coolpix S5100; which cost me $100 new. We're all on a budget, and it's good to see you don't have to drop $20k on a pro-sumer SLR with a specialized macro-lens. An hour of research will last you through years of photographing without breaking the bank.
There's one thing I didn't mention here, and that's photoshop. I don't think it's fair to expect that a recreational painter should have access to high-end graphics software and know how to adjust levels, white balance, and so forth. I haven't done anything to any of these pictures in photoshop aside from cropping and resizing, which you can get from much more modest (read: free) graphics programs. If it's well lit with a clean background, you won't need anything else.
So another model is done and tucked away. Next week we take a break from the challenge for something completely different...
