Lessons I learnt the first time I photographed papyrus

Glass can be an absolute bastard for a photographer to deal with. Many of us have come home from trips to the museum with our snaps of artefacts photobombed by reflections of lights and our big ol’ heads.

This was something I had to get my head around when I started photographing papyri for the Garstang Museum’s Book of the Dead: Passport through the Underworld exhibition; most of the pieces of papyrus I was to photograph were housed between two sheets of glass. And this was my first professional exhibition photography and had never photographed papyrus under controlled conditions before.

So, I decided the best thing to do was to come in and have a play first before getting stuck into the actual photography.

Practice makes perfect

The papyri had been laid out in the museum’s teaching room while the staff were planning the exhibition. So we decided to start there.

From just taking a quick, handheld test shot, it was obvious that the overhead fluorescent lights were a real problem. They created horrible reflections on the glass.

I could’ve tried using a polarising filter on my camera, but they tend to reduce, not eliminate, reflections. They also work only if the camera’s at an angle to the glass, which would be no use to me, as I wanted to be shooting straight on.

So, I tried putting a physical barrier between the fluorescent light and the glass surface (in this case, I held my coat over the camera). But because I was in a large room, there were too many lights for me to block, and I was still getting some pretty fugly reflections.

I quickly realised that if I couldn’t eliminate the reflections, I had to eliminate the lights and instead use a different light source. The reflections happen when the lights are shining directly onto the glass, so instead I needed a light that sat low down and skimmed across the surface of the glas.

As I hadn’t brought my panel light with me, I had to come up with a DIY solution for the day: the LED light on my mobile phone.

Unfortunately, the lights on mobile phones are teeny, and illuminate only a small area in front of them. Quite dimly.

So, I needed to have a longer exposure time and move the light around to illuminate the whole shot. There I was, standing in a dark room, taking photos with a ten-second exposure, waving a mobile phone around beside the papyrus.

Whilst it was a little cumbersome, I think you’ll agree the preliminary result was much better. Not did I get rid of the reflections, the side lighting really brings out the texture in the papyrus. I think it gives the papyrus a slightly ethereal, otherworldly feel to it.

I also – accidentally – found out something really fun. If you don’t move the phone around enough during a long exposure, you end up with an unintentional light painting on the glass …

Equipment set up

Artefact photography like this needs quite a specific set up.

Firstly, you really, really need a tripod. Having your camera on a tripod allows you to:

• use longer shutter speeds without getting blur from hand shake in the photos (as the first papyrus photo above rather obviously highlights)
• keep the camera’s position consistent while you sort out lighting and camera settings
• ensure the camera’s looking straight on, and isn’t sitting all skew-whiff
• keep working without having to divide your concentration between camera and papyrus, and risk damaging an irreplaceable ancient artefact

Secondly, you need – ideally – a macro lens to get the kind of detail you’re seeing in these photos. You could manage without, but you wouldn’t be able to get as much detail.

Thirdly, you need a remote shutter to be able to make the photo without touching the camera. When you’re using a slower shutter speed, you risk wobbling the camera and getting a blurry photo if you press the shutter button itself. I use a remote control, which has a unit that connects to the hotshoe (where a flash would normally connect), and another unit which I hold. You can also use a shutter cable, which connects to your shutter button, or use the timer on your camera.

Here’s my camera set up in the teaching room taking some test shots. The central column on the tripod comes up and out so you can point the camera straight down across the papyrus. As you can see, I’ve had to counterweight the back of the tripod with one of my bags (a standard counterweighting technique in the photography world) so it doesn’t topple over forwards onto the glass.

All-in-all, it was a really fun day and I learnt a lot.

If you need to photograph papyrus like this, or any object encased in glass, the most important things you can do are:

• be somewhere you can switch the main lights off and use a small light set low to skim the light across the surface. Even a desk lamp with a flexible neck will do the job
• use a tripod. If you can’t afford (or have the space for) a full-size tripod, there are some great mini tripods instead
• use a remote shutter or the timer to avoid shaking the camera when you’re making your photos
• make sure you give yourself some time to try different settings on the camera and different camera positions to get the photos looking how you want them to. If you’re rushing, you probably won’t get what you need

And finally, use a macro lens, if you’re able, and if you need to get details up close. But, macro lenses are expensive, so depending on what your photography is for, this isn’t a must.

Remember: this is digital photography. If it takes you twenty tries to get the photo right, it doesn’t matter – just delete the crap ones and move on.

Be brave. Play. Have fun!

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Julia

Unless otherwise credited, all photos in this post are © Julia Thorne. If you’d like to use any of my photos in a lecture, presentation or blog post, please don’t just take them; drop me an email via my contact page. If you share them on social media, please link back to this site or to one of my social media accounts. Thanks!