I want to upgrade my photographs for juried shows. I've decided I need to hire a professional to take the pictures.
My work is glass and is difficult to photograph. The pieces look very different depending on the lighting.
One person I spoke to suggested showing different views of the piece in one photograph to emphasize how the light effects the piece.
Does anyone have any suggestions about showing more than one view in one photograph or should I just have one picture of the piece in the photograph?
Replies
I took a quick look at your work on your website and I would not recommend multiple views in a single jury photo for your work. It will only be a distraction and won't add anything to their understanding of the piece. As Larry said, inset pictures are usually done to show an important small detail that can't be seen in the overall view.
Regarding the quality of the photographs, their are many that as long as the colors are correct (as I'm sure you've discovered glass changes color depending on the "color" of the lighting) could be quite acceptable juror photos with professional post-processing - cleaning up a few things, changing the background, etc. I (and most other experienced artwork photographers, of course) can do that for you both to create new jury photos or just increase the quality of your website presentation. You can see examples on my website: www.barryvangrovphotography.com/ArtandArtistBoothPhotography.
Feel free to email me if you want to discuss further.
Barry Vangrov
bvangrov@yahoo.com
www.BarryVangrovPhotography.com
Hi I would highly recommend you hire Larry Berman to do your photography and post-processing. Larry does all of my jury photography and I am extremely pleased with his work.
I just answered that question on the ZAPP forum yesterday.
You can do a picture in a picture but, jurors may not like it because it adds to the visual overload they already have by giving them more to take in within the fixed amount of time they get to evaluate your work. So if you do it, I recommend for not more than one jury image.
Other factors are that if the multiple images are relatively equal in size within your single jury image, each will be too small to see anything relevant in the images. Artists usually use that technique to show detail and I recommend having the detail be the full size image and the picture of the full piece be smaller in an inset.
I do have examples of my glass photography on my web site:
http://bermangraphics.com/digital-jury-resources/jury-slide-photogr...
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Thank you for your reply. I'm getting together my portfolio and will get back in touch when I decide which pieces to show.