How clueless, photography-challenged people can take good typewriter photos in three easy steps

In response to a reader’s request, here is a general outline of how I go about photographing my typewriters. By observing a few easy guidelines, I believe that anyone can achieve similar results. I don’t have any fancy equipment; my studio is the top of my basement clothes dryer, and my camera is a Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot.

First, you need a typewriter. If you do not have a typewriter, I’m sorry, but you have more problems than I can help you with.

1. Make your typewriter look good. I don’t mean just cleaning it, although that should be done as well. Wiping down the machine with a light coat of Pledge or Old English will give it a nice shine. To eliminate background distractions and make your typewriter the focus of attention, place your typewriter on a plain white surface, like posterboard. As it turns out, this is helpful for the last step.

2. Photograph your typewriter under the best possible conditions. You should have good, bright light. I can’t emphasize enough how important good lighting is to good photographs. Either shoot outside on a sunny day or underneath a soft, white indoor light. (I shoot mine underneath daylight-replicating fluorescent lights made for reptile enclosures, available at most pet stores.) A regular, bare light bulb is both too yellow and too harsh. Avoid using camera flash. Use a tripod or some other stable surface combined with a remote release or self-timer to eliminate shake. Close down the aperture as small as it will go for the sharpest detail. Don’t worry about long exposure times; you have a tripod.

3. Adjust your photo’s colors. Ideally, you set your camera’s white balance before you took the photo, but you can rarely avoid having to do some color-correction. I use Photoshop, but most of these adjustments can be done in almost any photo editing software.

Set your white point based on the background posterboard. I prefer to use Curves over Levels because unlike Levels, Curves doesn’t destroy pixel data.

Bring out the machine’s details by lightening the shadows. About 10% works for me most of the time. Too much lightening of shadows or darkening of highlights can make your photo look like one of those crappy HDR jobs, and you don’t want that–unless you like crappy HDR jobs, in which case see my comment about not having a typewriter.

Even lighting with sunlight or using indoor lighting filters will result in a little yellow cast. Go into Color Balance and adjust the sliders until the blacks look closer to true black. Deep black reflects highlights as blue, so I shift the colors closer to the blue spectrum.

Sharpen the picture just a bit.

This isn’t absolutely everything I do in post, but these basic steps ought to be enough for anyone to take great-looking typewriter photos.