An engineer by occupation, photography is a hobby that my parents led me to in high school when they gave me a simple Yashica 35 mm rangefinder. With the advent of high-quality digital camera and image editing software, photography has become more attractive.

Many photographers display only their best photos on Flickr. However, I like to choose a subject, make a folder for it, and add enough photos to give a sense of the subject. Churches, art museums and nature are among the subjects I photograph most often.

It's nice to create a repository of interesting or representative works seen in art museums, but these, especially illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, and paintings, are difficult subjects. At least most artwork is static, but still the challenges include feeble and inconsistent (temperature-wise) lighting and wise policies against use of flash and supports (tripods), the difficulty of shooting precisely horizontally and at right angles to the canvas, tapestry, or manuscript page, as well as hoards of fellow art lovers crowding around. With respect to light, it sometimes seems that each artwork is illuminated at a different intensity and color temperature. I made a few trials at adjusting the color temperature setting in the camera but didn't think the results were any improvement, so I leave the setting on auto white balance. I try to correct for color temperature in post-processing. With photos in general, the color correction can be considered a matter of taste, since photography is not necessarily an attempt to recreate a scene precisely, but to create a work of art. But for artwork in particular, it would be desirable to recreate the colors faithfully. However, it is not possible to do that in post-processing because the original is not present in order to make a comparison. Even reproductions in an art book cannot be trusted, as a comparison of reproductions of the same artwork in different art books will attest. So, I strive for color that I think seems about right.