No Detail Too Small
The precise photography of the Lunar New Year stamp series.
Studio photographers face a unique challenge when asked to shoot the work of other artists. What lighting is best? What complementary colors should they use? How should they present a three-dimensional piece? In some cases, photographing another artist’s creation can be more daunting than creating new work from scratch. For the 2025 Year of the Snake stamp, photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce rose to the challenge and delivered a masterful result.
Andersen-Bruce’s photographs have been featured on many U.S. postage stamps, including Classic American Dolls (1997), Neuter or Spay (2002), Nutcrackers (2008), Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet (2010), Weather Vanes (2012), Gingerbread Houses (2013), as well as Jack-o-lanterns and Diwali (2016). Most recently, her photography appears in the current series of Lunar New Year stamps.
Lunar New Year is one of the Postal Service’s longer-running stamp series. Typically, stamp designs honor a subject once, for a single year, but certain topics are given a multiyear commitment. The Lunar New Year series is now in its third cycle through the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac — the previous two editions, which ran from 1992 to 2004 and from 2008 to 2019, showcased the art of Clarence Lee and Kam Mak.
Replicating the process
For the 2025 Year of the Snake stamp, Andersen-Bruce worked closely with art director Antonio Alcalá to recreate the look and feel of the five previous stamps in the current series. While it may seem straightforward to replicate their process each year, the snake stamp posed new challenges given the unique shape and color scheme of artist Camille Chew’s three-dimensional cut-paper mask.
“Each stamp must ‘read’ as part of the series,” explains Andersen-Bruce, “as if the masks were all photographed at the same time under the same lighting conditions on an identical background. This is a challenge. The shadows must match — a soft shadow versus a high-contrast shadow.”
Working with Alcalá, Andersen-Bruce paid close attention to the verdant colors of the snake mask when shooting her photographs. “The colors of the masks are different,” she says, “so defining dimension on a light-colored mask on a white background is a different challenge than showing dimension on a mask with a full tonal range.” The 2024 Year of the Dragon stamp, for example, featured a mask that was alive with vibrant red, orange, and yellow tones — the snake’s colors, by contrast, are subdued and earthy greens and blues.
The unique shape of the snake mask also posed specific challenges for Andersen-Bruce. For one, the head of the snake is much smaller than the other animals in the series, making it difficult to frame in the final image. The thin, winding mask also takes up less space and creates very different shadowing than its predecessors.
“Each stamp must ‘read’ as part of the series, as if the masks were all photographed at the same time under the same lighting conditions on an identical background. This is a challenge.”
“The snake mask was much flatter than the dragon mask, so the lighting had to be adjusted to draw the 3D form of the snake and make it match the previous masks in the series,” Andersen-Bruce explains. “I built custom stands to elevate the snake’s body and each of the baubles. This was tricky because I couldn’t let the shadows of the stands show in the final photo — just the shadow of the mask itself.”
“I am an optimist. I’m hopeful to create the ‘perfect’ image on the first try. In this case, it took a few more tries to get it ‘perfect.’”
A time-tested partnership
Fortunately, in her quest for perfection, Andersen-Bruce has an experienced partner to work with in Alcalá. “Antonio is very clear when he explains the creative direction of a photograph — from which angle the light should fall in the photo to match the other masks.”
Their partnership requires clear communication and an understanding of the entire 12-part stamp series. “It’s about having the experience to duplicate and capture the lighting and also fit the mask into the stamp space while matching the others in the series.”
“It looks very clean and simple,” she says, “and that is exactly the way that I would hope it appears. But it’s taken me decades of practicing to be able to achieve that look. It’s not as simple to create as it appears in the final image.”
