Using Your Skull in Museum Light

My husband and I were visiting the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco in preparation for a group trip later that month.  I had grabbed my pocket camera, just in case we had time to visit some of the galleries.  We wandered into one of the permanent collections, the New Guinea Gallery, where photography was allowed, and were immediately overcome by the wide variety of masks, sculptures and ancestor skulls on view.   What a great Hallowe’en treat this would be for my grandsons!  I had to capture some of these. 

DeYoung Museum New Guinea Collection

When we entered the gallery, I immediately reset my camera for low museum light.  First, I found the flash control and turned off the flash.   Then I found the menu control, where I could adjust the light senstivity reading, called ISO settings.  All cameras “automatically” put this reading on “auto” adjustment.  However, that rarely “adjusts” well for museum light.  The gallery was fairly well lit, and the lighting in the museum cases was fairly bright, so I set the light sensitivity, the ISO,  at 400.  In order to frame the masks themselves and to get an accurate reading on the light, I stepped back a little and used the zoom lens to frame the artifact  itself. 

I had to check the corners for window glare on the glass casing that held the artifact.  Avoiding excess window glare is difficult but critical to a good photo – the glare can obliterate an otherwise good photo.  I saw a little in the upper left corner of the shot, but it didn’t interfere with the subject itself.  So, I let it go.  Sometimes I need to step to one side or the other in order to avoid this glare problem.

This portrait of a 20th century New Guinea ancestor skull was the result.  A great reminder to honor our ancestors this Hallowe’en and the All Soul’s Day which follows.