Updated for 2011, the desktop, standard-sized version of the Signwriters pricing guides. The same information as in the mini Sign Contractors Pricing Guide, the desktop guide includes pricing for artwork, ...
Darek's September 2009 column
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Selling signs requires a synchronization of pricing, quality, reputation, design and presentation; the latter includes photographs of installed work. Most daylight photos of signs look great. The weak point is nighttime shots of lighted signs, because several issues challenge both the photographer and camera. These include exceeding the camera’s sensor (light/dark) range, lens refraction, aberrant light, color shifts (due to incorrect white balance), and moisture, smog or dust in the ambient atmosphere. Any of these constraints may cause nighttime photographs of either lighted neon, or internally-illuminated signs, to emerge differently from the sign’s true image, the one you want sign buyers to see.
Your camera sees the world differently than you, and understanding this difference is the key to photographing complex scenes successfully. Camera engineers design their photo sensors to record evenly lit scenes, and the devices falter when asked to perform outside that realm.
We’ve all seen those awful, sunset photos of friends on a beach: dark figures surrounded by a bright sunset. The camera’s light meter read the dominant lighted area, the sunset sky, and automatically adjusted the lens for the greater light. Consequently, the sky is nicely exposed, but the friends appear as silhouettes. Nighttime sign photography offers a reverse circumstance: a lighted signface against a dark, featureless background.
Newer, digital cameras have work-around settings that compensate for such nonconforming activities, and I’ll have more on this in a minute; however, let’s first examine how your camera sees and what you can do to help it.
All camera light meters interpret incoming light as a medium gray tone (18% gray is the accepted standard). If you photograph three illustration boards – one white, one gray and one black – using unvarying light and your camera’s meter, the resulting photo will show each at the same shade. Remove any color, and you’ll have three photos of medium-gray (18%) boards.
Eighteen percent gray is roughly the shade of rain-dampened concrete.
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