Project 1 ~ Scanning

I've been building a pretty good photography library over the years.  One place I shop is used and thrift bookstores.  I recently found a series of books offering 52 weekend projects for photographers. Covering different genres such as landscape, street, experimental, etc.  I'm going to be posting projects periodically and share my experiments with you.  I tried this before in my old blog from a particular book that lost my interest after I had posted about 7 projects. I’m not sure why I stopped, maybe the projects were just out of my reach or life issues got in the way probably a combination. I'll do my best to follow through this time!  It's a great way to keep me motivated.  This post is from one of the new to me books...

Have you ever thought about using your printer/scanner to take photos of a object?  I hadn't and was intrigued by this project.

My first attempt went okay (above).  Flat items, like leaves photograph well.  

On my second attempt, the items I picked were too small.  I would say my old printer/scanner was not designed for macro shots.  I don't have a control on my scanner to enlarge.  And the photo quality isn't good enough to crop the photo in my processing software as you can see above.  Small items like acorns and shells just don't make the mark for this project. 

I picked some fluff from an ornamental grass to see how they would photograph.  The leaves are a  wee bit to small to scan. 

They have shadows behind the leaves and the fluffy seeds, but I kind of like seeing that in these shots.  These photos didn’t enlarge (8X10) well for prints but they are okay for digital photos. 

Next I tried scanning a silly necklace I made (You have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince). The shadows were incredibly bad which I tried to remove in Elements 2018.

And a fortune cookie. This was shot without the lid down.  Why aren't fortunes fortunes anymore?

Then I played around with a scanned lime which came out okay after the shadow was removed.  Using my processing software I had fun tweaking the colors in the second shot.  

And finally, I couldn't help myself, I bought some flowers while at the grocery store. The shadows were pretty bad in the first try so I tried to remove as much of them as I could without loosing any petal or stem detail.  The second try I  used a black enameled baking pan which made the colors pop but I lost some detail in the center of the sunflower.  Maybe turning the pan as to flatten the subject and adding some books might fix that.  Or use a sheet of colored paper between the objects and lid than close the lid.

Some tips:
1.  Keep the platen or glass clean of smears and dust.
2.  Consider using a black background it removes shadows and bold colors pop.  To do that leave the lid open in a dark room or cover with a black bottom cake pan like I did (above).  I found the pan worked best for a black background for my room wasn't dark.
3.  Keep your subject simple (that is according to the book but generally I would agree).  My leaves photo was the best of the shots I took and it was a hodge podge of elements.
4.  The book notes that LED scanners do not work well for taking photos (dimmer light).  My old model prints, scans and faxes it is an Epson Artisan 820. 

Depending on what you might be wanting to photograph, your scanner might be an adequate substitute for a camera in a pinch.  Though using a cell phone is much quicker!

Happy Click’N!