14) Resources on Photographing Artwork

Note: Links are to titles listed at amazon.com. This is for your convenience. Sometimes the same books are available at other dealers for less. I’ve had good experiences buying secondhand books through amazon.com, as well as finding them through www.bookfinder.com. I have no affiliate status with amazon, nor any other reason to recommend them except for good prices and service over the years. Also I find the customer reviews very useful.

This is the book I found most useful:

Photographing Your Artwork, by Russell Hart, 2000.

In addition, I’ve studied:

• The Quick & Easy Guide to Photographing Your Artwork, by Roger Saddington, 2003. Diagrams and examples are excellent.

• Photographing Your Craftwork, by Steve Meltzer, 1997. This is the classic guide, very useful though I don’t agree with everything Steve says.

• How to Photograph Works of Art, by Sheldan Collins, 1992.

• Photographing Works of Art, by William H. Titus, 1981.

• SLR Photographer’s Handbook, by Carl Shipman, 1977. Any basic SLR manual that’s easy to understand, will be useful for study and reference. I got this at a library sale and have found it very helpful.

• Lighting Secrets for the Professional Photographer, by Alan Brown, Joe Braun, and Tim Grondin, 1990. This is much more advanced, but as a supplement to one of the basic books above, illuminates the differences various reflectors and other accessories can make. It aids in learning to see new possibilities.

• Improve Your Glass, Bead & Jewelry Photographs, by Dale Lynn. This is an article at the great Wet Canvas site.

• How to Photograph Flat Art, by Rick Lee. This is another article at Wet Canvas.

• How to Photograph Your Paintings Digitally

• How to Photograph Your Paintings with Slides. This is for daylight photography; author recommends Fuji Velvia.
   

For answers to film photography questions and problems, try the usenet group, rec.photo.35mm. You can access this through your news reader (like Microsoft Outlook Express) or via google groups.

Yahoo groups has mailing list groups for almost every brand of 35mm camera. The group for your camera can be invaluable in selecting lenses and solving problems. For old manual cameras, this is especially useful.

Of course you can search for specific topics at www.google.com, both on the web and in usenet groups. Often the answers will turn out to be located in the photonet forums.

Photographer Michel Ditlove often provides generous help to questions posted in the PACA forum.

You can also search for Steve Meltzer’s past columns in The Crafts Report. Quite a few are available online. This link is to the search page.

Amy O’Connell on Basic Jewelry Photography. Much of this can be adapted to larger works.

Tabletop Photography.

Photo Tips for Metalsmiths

I’ve read quite a few articles online about photographing artwork, but have lost track of them.

New articles online since I first published this article:

Photographing Enamels, by Alexa Smarsh - step by step information on using a Nikon 995 digital camera to photograph small enamel jewelry pieces.

Photographing Your Artwork, by Nita Leland - brief guide, mostly for photographing 2D artwork.

(This is the end of the article.)

taking, shooting slides of 3-d artwork, 3d artwork, sculpture, crafts

tabletop photography

how to photograph 3d artwork, 3-d artwork, sculpture, crafts