The time is bittersweet. Sunrise Over the Gulf River is done. I am missing the heady excitement of watching a piece come together. Now, it is on to preparing, what I call, its formal photos.
With A Little Help From My Husband
For the past 10 years my husband and I have teamed up to handle the photography side of my work. He takes the vast majority of the photographs you see on the this blog and all the photographs of work created after 2010 on my website. I select which photographs to trash and which to keep. Preparing a photograph for the blog is relatively easy. However, no matter how many times I do it, preparing photographs for my website and for call for entries is a job I would gratefully unload.
Yes, I do trash the vast majority of the images. I do this for two reasons. First, my husband purposefully takes images at various light settings. I only keep the ones with the best lighting. Second, I select only one or two detail shots for each quilt and one full view. He may give me 5 or more detail images to consider.
Shout Out For Organization
Organization is key. A system is essential if I am to find an image in a heartbeat. I divide all my images into personally meaningful categories, such as sunrise quilts. Then each quilt has its own folder. This is further divided into a few subfolders, Altered Images, Entry Images, Original Images and Work in Progress images.
No surprise, I’m a stickler for file names. A typical file name might be 191122 Sunrise Over the Gulf River FV 300 8 x 10.jpeg. This tells me everything I need to know. 191122 is the date (November 22, 2019) photograph was taken. This is followed by the name of the quilt. It is a Full View (FV) quilt of the quilt vs. a detail. The resolution is 300 and the size of the image is 8″ x 10″.
Housekeeping: the pluses and minuses
I’m not a fan of housekeeping, whether it is cleaning the bathroom or handling the tricky process of extracting a quilt, with the edges showing, from its background. I do love a clean bathroom and being able to put my hands on an image for a call a for entry in less than a minute is priceless.
It occurred to me as I wrote this post, my housekeeping style is the same whether it is taking care of our home or images of artwork. How about you?
I am linking up with Nina Marie’s Off the Wall Fridays.
