Preparing Your Images
Art show juries sit in dark room reviewing array after array of slides of artists' work. I've read posts from these people recapping this experience and each described the process as being quite a challenge. Part of my job as an artist is to find ways to represent my work in this tough situation that helps these people see what it is I'm doing in the best light possible.Typically my images will be seen for maybe 10 seconds, in a group, amongst a line up of such images in perhaps hundreds of such groupings. I want to make my 10 seconds count! In order to do this I have to prepare drop-dead gorgeous photos of my work!
Thanks for the Advice, Larry!
I took some time to scan the advice available out there as to what works the best in these settings and for work as unusual and colorful as mine it seems presenting it on a very plain background is of paramount import. So the choice comes down to:- white
- grey or
- black?
Larry Berman of Berman Graphics offers some tip on how to get the most from your photos. Below is another examples of how I applied what Larry shared on his site:
What did I do?
In Photoshop:- I erased any extraneous accoutrements (like on the purses, the wire I used to hang them)
- I removed all the original background
- I added a layer of pure black behind the original image
- I made several copies of the image and using various tweaks adjusted the color, saturation and contrast to better reflect the reality of each piece
- I sized the image to match the requirements of the major online application site (Zapp!) or 1920 pixels square
- then I optimized each image (high resolution jog) to upload into my media file on the Zapp site.
Comments
Great info Marti - they look superb!
Depending on the program you're using to tweak your photos Diane, try creating a new document and setting the pixel size there to 1920 x 1920. It doesn't matter what the resolution is (72dpi, 96dpi, 150dpi, etc) as long as that's what the pixel size is.
The labor here is in eliminating the original background without compromising the foreground art. When you zoom in it is amazing how much light is reflected along the edges of a piece that really is jarring when you put it on a solid black background. Larry seems to be partial to a gradient gray background for a lot of art. You can create one fairly simply in Photoshop. Or your Photoshop using friend can for you. :)