In order to do well in the art community you have to get into shows. The best shows are typically juried. To get into those shows you have to have great photographs. The jury looks at the pictures to decide what handmade items are the best and allowed into the show.
Now I have a little station in my “show room” to take pictures for my artwork for my websites, but my hand tends to shake and the pictures are a little blurry so not all that great. In fact, I put a disclaimer saying glass is difficult to photograph.
Anyway, while at one of my shows I had a photographer (Melinda from Photos for Books) come up and tell me she’d love to take photos of my fused glass artwork. I’m always a little skeptical of someone just walking up to me like that but told her to come back to one of my shows and we’d talk about it. She came back and I gave her 6 of my favorite fused glass pendants. The fused glass pendants I chose were extremely difficult because I wanted them to represent a variety of my work.
I gave her various techniques a screen-melt (so many different colors), a scenic (which had white and black decals and various layers of dichroic glass – extremely difficult to photograph), a pebble (again so many colors and depth), and three other dichroic pendants that again are extremely difficult to photograph accurately.
To say the least Melinda’s photography blew me away. I was amazed at how accurate the colors were and how she was able to show the depth of the colors. Truly amazing. So fantastic I asked her to do some of fused glass pieces that are even more difficult to photograph because of their size, etc. including my fused glass aspens, a night light, an ink blot sculpture, etc.
All I can say is OMG, it takes a while because she’s very precise but it’s well worth the wait. If you have something (arts, crafts, jewelry, apparel, etc) you want photographed I highly recommend Melinda. She does extremely professional work, is reasonably priced, and is very easy to work with.
With her photographs of my beautiful work hopefully I’ll get into even more shows.
The next ones she will be photographing are earrings, rings, bracelets, accessories, etc. Can’t wait to see what she does with them!!
Keeping my kiln warm,
Karen