Photography for Matte Painters (a quick guide)

I have decided to kick off my new blog in earnest with what I hope will be a useful series: Photography for Matte Painters.

Why am I doing this series? Because photography is central to the digital matte painting process.

In real-world production environments, there is almost never time to hand-paint a photoreal matte painting from scratch. To be brutally honest, I doubt there are more than a handful of matte painters around who are even capable of doing so in an efficient manner - I know I'm not! In reality, most modern matte "paintings" are a motley amalgam of photographs, 3D renders and the occasional small hand-painted element.

Given the importance of photographs in digital matte painting, it stands to reason that matte painters ought to pay close attention to their photographic skills. Many of course already do; and to those, I only hope to offer the occasional nugget of information they might not have considered before.

But to those whose tendency is towards a "spray and pray" approach to photography, I urge a more methodical way of working. I will provide a concise set of best practices with which you can immediately, measurably and consistently improve the technical quality of your photographs. I hope that your matte paintings will benefit from the improvement.

Topics

Over the following posts, I will discuss:

• Cameras and Lenses
• Support and panorama gear
• Choosing your subject
• Lighting
• Shot discipline
• Camera settings and exposure
• Post processing
• Organizing your image library

What I'm NOT going to talk about

I will not be writing about photography as an art form; I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I'm qualified to do so. I will focus only on the technical aspects of the photographic process that are salient to matte painting.

As such, I will try to keep things concise. I will make concrete recommendations when it makes sense to do so, but I won't necessarily explain in great depth the reasoning behind them. Others have done a far better job of that than I can, so I will provide extensive references and links to further reading.

So check in regularly; I will be posting new installments weekly for the next eight weeks.

Enjoy!

~Jeremy