Thanks to @Kathlyn Powell for bringing this up and everyone else @Cécilia Duminuco for their input. Regarding the gold in reproductions: it seems like a perennial problem because gold and colours seem to cancel each other out. This happens in real life too - there is kind of a 'double viewing' of each page because when the gold is shining you're looking at that, and then when the gold is 'dulled' (ie not caught in the light) you're looking at the colours. The same thing happens on camera too, if you have a bird's eye view; you focus on the colours and the gold is dulled to brown. And the standard reproduction is taken with a bird's eye view and doesn't tell the whole story. So, some thoughts and potential ideas:
- only ever view works in real life (nope!)
- sacrifice the gold in favour of true, correct colours (I've seen this more and do this myself)
- sacrifice the colours in favour of the shining gold (I've seen this less often)
- just try to get a small portion of the gold to shine even in a bird's eye colour correct photo, just to hint at the fact that there is indeed gold (I've seen this too and have tried to do this with my FIRE! painting which is done entirely in gold - will be shown soon; I've seen many, many reproductions of my favourite painting The Court of Gayumars and in my favourite one they've just shown a hint of gold shine at the top and chosen to focus on the colours)
- take 2 photos of each work, one bird's eye to focus on the colours and one to focus on the shining gold and get a professional Photoshop expert to stitch them together
- in general work with professional photographers; it's a known problem and there seems to always be something to sacrifice (see https://www.vaishaliprazmari.co.uk/canopy-of-stars as a case in point: this is a lacquer work and the photographer tried to find a balance between the shining gold and shining lacquer, but the lacquer looks completely matte, although the abalone shell and colours look good. The background to the Forum - the Conference of the Birds painting - looks good; the zarafshan gold sprinkling strikes a happy balance between a small amount of shine and still-lush colours of the painting)
- if making prints: sacrifice the gold in favour of the colours and hand gild gold leaf or paint shell gold or gold paint on top of the gold (I've seen this lots too, both in contemporary art prints and also in some old books where they reproduce miniatures)
- take videos of the gold shining where possible (I've done this with FIRE!)
- verbally state the problems of reproducing gold so that the viewer knows
...there are likely more answers and professionals who think about this all the time! Gold is such an integral part of miniatures and reproductions such an integral part of our world that this is surely being sorted someplace somewhere somehow!
It does seem like you have gone to great length to achieve the best results possible. Beadwork and jewelry photography is similarly difficult. Often neither I nor the photographer is 100% happy with the results. It's an incredible challenge, for sure.
I will throw in my two cents with a suggestion for photographing of miniature paintings:
We know that we would need to make a composite, photographing the painting and the gilding separately, if we want to get a good reproduction of the work. As a painter and textile artist, I have always documented the process, saving every sketch and image that became part of the final product. Photocopies served in the past; now iPhone cameras and scanners have made it super easy to get excellent quality.
I always make sure I have the highest resolution scan possible of the line art.
This is may be a common practice for illustrators and designers, but I have never discussed it with anyone. For miniature painting I definitely scan after inking and before painting. The uses for having a clean copy of your line art are endless, but especially when you want to composite-edit a photo. You just need to remember to copy before you've started to paint.
By the way, Vaishali, I love your dream and your painting!
My suspicion is that what is needed is a scanning device that reads the entire picture first and adjusts exposure pixel by pixel across it. I would like to do some HDR/exposure stacking experiments to see if that works, using omnidirectional light in a soft box. If anyone has a really great camera that can exposure bracket or stack, perhaps they could run the experiment, too. I have to get a more capable camera first. It is worth experimenting to see if there is any way we can reconcile color and glint of gold in digital reproductions!