Udiggit

What is the best way to take good pictures of your art?

I am interested in having a good digital portfolio of my art. To put up on a web site, send to family and just have as a record. What is the best way to get quality digital photos of my framed pieces (most of them are framed). I would rather do this myself rather than have another expense. I have a decent digital camera.
Jay….apparently you feel this is a lame question. I am serious though. I figured I could benefit from some experience out there.
“It is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and eliminate any doubt of it” Thanks for taking the high road.

Is there any way you could remove your artwork temporarily? I ask, because the glass is going to give glare from any strong light source that is close. You want to set up diffuse lighting around your artwork; this can be achieved with three lights with a dryer sheet over them to make the light softer, or more diffuse. You want to reflect this light off of the ceiling and walls around the work, but not off the work itself – the goal is to evenly light all around your artwork. The lights should all be facing different angles, at least 1 above, 1 right, plus 1 left of the artwork. You should have your artwork standing at 90 degrees or as close to it as possible. The background should be even and beautiful. You can use a dropcloth or a solid wall for this. Make sure to use a tripod for your camera. This is for stability, and the stability is to minimize camera shake, so your picture turns out clear. If you are using a typical consumer camera with zoom, make sure to start farther away from your artwork and zoom in on it – this will make sure that it will be in better focus; it will also avoid lens distortion from being too close. Your camera body should be parallel to your artwork (facing it head on). Do not use flash. Make sure your digital camera setting is set to high resolution, and be sure to leave room around your piece of artwork, so you can crop it effectively after the photos are taken. Take several shots of each piece, as sometimes photos that look good on your camera don’t look so hot when you look at them at normal size. For faster upload/download time, edit the resulting pictures by cropping them to your liking, then adjusting the ppi(or dpi) to appropriate web standards (keep in mind that monitors are 72-96ppi nowadays, so you’ll need to reduce your image size before uploading to the web, otherwise the photos will turn out huge). There are shareware photo editing programs available if you google for them. Save the edited pictures as different files from the originals, so you always have the originals to work from if you want to make any changes, or to print from with high resolution. There. I feel like this has just skimmed the surface, but hopefully it gave you and idea about how to go about it. If you want to learn more about photography, check out the TwiP podcast (no affiliation). Cheers.

Transcend PF830 Digital Photo Frame