Advice on photographing rock art please!

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Idwal I
Idwal May 3, 2008 23:05:12

I'm now living in Hamburg and so my new posts on sites in Wales and the Peak District have dried up.

There are lots of long barrows and dolmens within an easy drive of here but much more intriguing to me are Schalensteine or cup-marked rocks. They are most often found on Findlings or erratic rocks that were deposited when the glaciers retreated but are also found on stones in burial chambers. The marks are usually about 2 or 3 cm in diameter and a few mm deep. There can be just one or two on a rock but there can also be up to a hundred or more with no obvious pattern.

A straight-forward photo is usually disappointing. I have tried wetting the rock and waiting for the sun to shine brightly enough but that's not much better. Putting small coins in the cup-marks shows the pattern but is rather crude. I've also seen examples in museums where the cups have been painted red to highlight them but I have definitely not tried that!

Has anyone got any practical advise please on what I can try?

Idwal

S scubi63
scubi63 May 4, 2008 07:16:26
Replying to Idwal

Hi Idwal,
What you can do will depend on the camera your using.
I have a digital SLR and a seperate flash and have found the best way to bring out any surface texture is to use the flash an off-camera on a seperate Tripod.
What I do is to set the exposure level and F-stop so the picture is as dark as possible (without the flash), which on my camera/lens/flash setup is about 1/200th @ f22.
By placing the flash at an angle to the surface you are photographing (rather than face on like the camera), the flash will pick out the highlights of the surface but leave any 'valleys' and 'troughs' in darkeness.
I also use a remote flash transmitter so that I can experiment with different flash positions, angles and exposures to get the best pictures.
Well I hope that was clear enough

:o)

Scubi