Tools of the trade

Today we're talking about modern good of the trade, nothing da Vinci etc. worried about. Today we live in the digital age where we can take and share hundreds and thousands of pictures all the time and that can be a real help in the art world.
I mostly take photos of my own work.

I use a Samsung point and shoot, it's not an amazing camera but it's pretty effective. I have a very crude set up and no real photographic trading. I general use natural light, lay my work on the floor (not directly) shoot several photos from above and try to get a variety of angles.
Then next step is to upload the photos to my computer and crop them using a free program called Irfanview. I also sometimes use Corel paintshop pro when I want to polish my images a bit more.
I have on ocassion had professional images taken and I've gone to David Hawkinson for that, he does a really good job and I believe his rates are reasonable.

A tip for aspiring artists

So something I didn't realize as an art student, was how important it was or would become to have the skills to photograph my own work. As a student it was more about having good representations to make into slides to enter shows etc. and I relied heavily on my dad who's BA is in photography (though that's not what he's done professionally). Technology has evolved (in the five years since I graduated) and I have a website, this blog, and a facebook page for my art and my routine is to photograph my art and get it online for people to see as soon as I can after finishing a piece. Again my dad has been a tech savvy help here, when I got my first digital camera, I've borrowed his tripod, he showed me to the free editing program that I use, he had a more high tech editing program that I've started using more and more, my photographs of my art have come a long way. It's still really tricky, I have a tendency to take my art all the way to the edge of my paper etc. and you can tell if the cropping turns out weird.
Photographing art is tricky and sadly I can't afford to pay a professional (and I hear a good one is hard to find, I've been lucky to have one when I need it) all or even half the time. I wish that I could have taken a class on photographing my work, or that one had even existed. Meanwhile, I'm doing the best I can.

Pictures of pictures

So there are so many things I've learned and adjusted to in the years since I've graduated, one of those things is to take better pictures of my work and to crop and edit them. I usually use IrfanView and crop the images I take of my pictures. I've recently learned a new trick on a different editing program. I use natural light to take my pictures, sometimes this is great and other times the light is not as great (cloudy days etc.), with this new editing trick (which I haven't actually gotten around to using much yet) it can make the colors more like they are in real life so that's cool.
Before:

 After:

LII

watercolor

18x18in

2014

Series: Eight Fold

It can make a real difference, though sadly I'm not sure if you can really tell with these two. There might be an edit but for now if you can't see it, just trust me that this can be pretty cool.