VALLAND’S SONG (1977) by Michael Whelan, cover for a mass market reissue of World Without Stars by Poul Anderson for ACE.

I had a smaller image of this in my digital archive so I was glad to stumble upon the original while cataloguing paintings stored away in Michael’s studio. The photo was a quick snap from my phone edited later in Photoshop. You can also see where I shot the painting on a large shipping table.

When viewed from overhead, the varnish on the painting cast too much of a glare. There’s a small window to the right of shipping table so I turned off the overhead fluorescents hoping that natural lighting would be enough to capture a good photo. To my surprise, the blacks in the background darkened in the dimmer lighting and the orange highlights cast from the campfire intensified.

Yesterday I posted about observing a similar effect with IN A WORLD OF HER OWN. I’m not sure how prominently you can see it here, but to the naked eye there was a dramatic shift in the mood of the painting when the lights went down.