How to Photograph Artwork–Tips from a Pro
Document Your Artwork — Photo Tips from Lori McNee
In past posts, I showed you how to create an artist’s portfolio — a photo book displaying your art. 
A book that can be printed, e-mailed or posted to a Web site, blog, Facebook or Twitter. In those posts, artist Tom Eddington had his fine wood sculptures professionally photographed and the finished book is spectacular. In this post, artist and blogger Lori McNee explains how to photograph your own artwork to get optimal results for a professional-looking representation of your work.
How to Photograph Your Artwork the Easy Way! Part 1
Submit Digital Photos by March 15 — Extended Deadline April 5
You’ve got to have a few terrific digital photos on your hard drive or in your camera that you could enter in the PDN Faces Portrait photo contest.
Who is PDN:
Photo District News (PDN), the award-winning monthly magazine for the professional photographer, has been covering the professional photographic industry for over two decades.
Who Can Enter: Amateur and professional photographers
Entry Categories: continue reading
8 Tips for Taking Great Digital Photos of Wildflowers
If you love snapping nature photos, especially of beautiful and unusual wildflowers, you’ll pick up a few tips from this post. Written by a Photo Naturalist, the post is from the Digital Photography School site — and I’d recommend it. And, of course, the photos are fabulous! And don’t forget, you can find great ways to print and share those wildflower photos you take when you upload them to lifephoto.com.
8 Tips for Photographing Wildflowers
In this post, Steve Berardi from PhotoNaturalist discusses eight tips for photographing wildflowers.To get the softly diffused light in this photo, I waited for an overcast sky. (Photo by Steve Berardi)With spring on the horizon in some parts of the world, you may be thinking about photographing some beautiful wildflowers soon. So, here are 8 tips to get you started:
1. Use a tripod
Using a tripod will help you get sharper photos by ensuring your camera doesn?t move. But, the tripod helps in another way too: it forces you to be more careful about your composition.
When you handhold your camera, there?s a tendency to just snap away, but when you add the tripod, you?ll spend more time thinking about your composition and ensuring your camera is in a very precise position.
2. Wait for an overcast or cloudy day
Rule of Thirds guides you toward capturing the best photo
It’s not my rule, but I’ve heard it a hundred times since I first picked up a camera. If you haven’t heard about using this rule to capture the “true essence” of the photo, you can find out more from digital photography pro, Darren Rowse. I was looking through his blog, Digital Photography School, and ran across this post which I’d like to share with you. Just might help you snap better pictures!
Perhaps the most well know principle of photographic composition is the ‘Rule of Thirds‘.
The “Rule of Thirds” one of the first things that budding digital photographers learn about in classes on photography and rightly so as it is the basis for well balanced and interesting shots.
I will say right up front however that rules are meant to be broken and ignoring this one doesn’t mean your images are necessarily unbalanced or uninteresting. However a wise person once told me that if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective!
What is the Rule of Thirds?
The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.
Enjoy–and learn from– the mystery, promise and past conveyed in Katherine Westerhout’s urban photos
As I was checking my inbound tweets, 
I saw one about how truly amazing this woman’s photos are. Checked it out and totally agree. That’s why I’m sharing Katherine Westerhout’s gallery and perspective with you.
Study her use of light, how she frames her subjects and what you think makes each photo so special. Then try to apply those ideas to your own photos. Good artists study the great masters and learn from them; as amateur photographers, we can study the work of people like Ms. Westerhout and learn from her.
See what you think about her philosphy and her photos. Then send me a Tweet or Facebook comment to share your thoughts. Let’s share this photo find with more people!
Artist’s Statement — Katherine Westerhout
Closely related to the language of dreams, photography reveals reflections that informmy life. Through them I seek a richer view of the literal world, in a place of the moment, seen in expanded dimensions. Within abandoned buildings, I meet a vision of the psyche. An echo punctuates human absence; carried on the light is a harbinger…These buildings are full of mystery and promise, and the longer one lingers, the more embraced one feels by a presence beyond the prosaic, in a sweeping realm, conjoined and familiar.
About the Work
These photographs are a selection from an ongoing series of urban landscapes that focus on interior spaces of abandoned buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond; in 2003, the work included temple sites in South East Asia, and has now moved into other areas of this country, as I continue to photograph the abandoned cityscape of America.
Encourage Kids to Write in a Journal Notebook
Kids have thoughts, ideas, dreams and wild stories in their heads.
Encourage young children to start recording them in a journal after they have learned to print. Here’s what one expert at the Creativity Portal thinks about children’s journaling:
Journaling: A Perfect Way to Enhance Your Child’s Literary Skills
By Day Penaflor
Call it a journal, a diary, a spy pad, a writer’s notebook, or a daybook. Whichever name you prefer, they all mean the same thing: a fun, personal, perfect way to enhance your child’s reading and writing skills. Journaling encourages children to be observers of the world, to be reflective of their experiences, and of course, to become expressive writers.
Make a Journal Notebook with Favorite Photos on the Cover continue reading
Remember the Birthday Fun
Do you have tons of pictures you took at your child’s last birthday party?
Gather them up to put into a birthday photo book. Just upload them to lifephoto.com — you can set up your own birthday book photo folder there at no cost.
At $6.95 for a 20-page softcover 6″ x 4″ photo book, it’s easy to make one for each child’s birthday. And these books will be a memory that will last forever. Here are some of the options:
- 7 books sizes
- Hardcover or softcover
- 4 paper stock choices
- Lots of birthday backgrounds to use (or not)
- 2-4 photos will easily fit on a page
- Many photo arrangement choices
- Full flexibility for photo placement, captions and text
Fast, Easy and Inexpensive Photo Books for Every Birthday
Get started now and surprise your child. Better yet, send one to Grandma and Grandpa, too.
PHOTO SHARING NOTE: Don’t forget — you can share your birthday photo book and your digital photo album by e-mail, on Facebook, Twitter or a blog.
Tweet this post or share it on Facebook.
Need a Housewarming Gift? Make a Personalized Guest Registry.
Someone will surely bring wine. Or a floral arrangement. 
Or a china platter. But you can bring a unique gift that the new home owners will treasure forever.
Make a personalized guest registry in which all the well-wishers can record their congratulations and useful advice for the new homeowners.
Photo Book Guest Register
Use photos of the house, moving day, family members helping with the move or painting the rooms. Take photos of the yard, the front door, the picket fence. Have fun with your photos and everyone will have fun signing the book and reliving the memories. Choose register style as well as background (or not) for your photos and register pages. It’s fast and easy. A housewarming guest register makes a memorable gift!
