Hi lovely people! Hope all is well in your little corner of this beautiful planet! Today I wanted to share some tips on taking photos of your art. I take mine with a Panasonic DMC-T25... not an over the top super dooper camera but enough to get a good resolution pic....from memory it was about $300ish purchased in the US in 2008. Marco just chimed in from the kitchen to say that the Leica lens on this particular camera is a pretty cool thing...not being techie I have no idea why but I'll take his word for it...thanks honey!
I started on this mixed media piece last night and even though its not yet finished I took some pics to give me some direction as to where I might go next. I always take my pics in natural light without a flash otherwise you get this unsightly patch of brightness in the pic....
which no amount of editing or deepening of shadows will get rid of...
I usually take my pics in the morning or afternoon in a place with soft indirect light......the light will differ with the seasons..its Winter here in Australia and you can see just a little of my woolly yellow sock! :) The floor of my studio near the door seems to work quite well. Try to stand directly over and take the photo as square as possible. For larger works you may have to stand on a stool.
*Tip; take at least 12 pics
I edit with a great free programme called Picasa 3..its easy to use and free to download! First thing is to crop your image..use the manual setting to get rid of all of the background. If your painting is not centered properly you may lose a little bit of the image hence the importance of taking lots of pics to try and get one that is nice and centered.
#Tip...if you press the little button at the bottom that says 1:1 it will blow your pic up to its full size. This way you can see which image is the clearest and most in focus. Delete any images that are in any way blurry.
After cropping I always use a magical little button called "I'm feeling lucky" remember you're trying to get a pic that looks the most like the real thing. 75% of the time this button gets the image pretty close.
Any kind of light has a washing out effect so after the lucky button I go to "tuning" and deepen the shadows a little....
then sometimes I'll take the light up just a little for balance.
Because I'm impatient I took some pics last night too, no flash, just my studio lights on....this gave a much warmer effect but I thought I'd share that too because sometimes that is what you might be after. if you are selling prints of your work you have the creative license to play with the images and decide which effects you like best. Playing and manipulating images this way can also spark ideas for new artworks...inspiration is everywhere!!
i pressed the "I'm feeling lucky button"
then deepened the shadows...
then brought the light up just a little y voila!! I might even like this warmer version better! What do you think? Have fun experimenting...when you're happy with your pics be sure to post them over at my Magically Mixed art group on Facebook! have a beautiful weekend and feel free to share this post on your FB walls!
love Tracy♥♥♥
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
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Lee:)