Tips when photographing work

Document finished 3D and 2D work, practical workshops and activities, work in progress, displays and exhibitions regularly with a digital camera for an instant archive of the breadth of coverage of your departmental work. This will be your most valuable resource for sharing and publicising pupils' achievements through presentations in school or virtual galleries on the web, for introducing skills and topics to future classes and, when burned onto CD-ROM, to provide pupils with an electronic portfolio of their attainments.

Although you can have your 35mm film put on CD-ROM by your local photo-lab, this is expensive: a digital camera plus CD-writer are a better investment, giving maximum flexibility for publishing, archiving and manipulating work. Scanning 2D work is also labour intensive. On the other hand, downloading images from camera to computer is quick and simple; while digital photographs can be previewed on the spot to check correct exposure, framing and focus.

	Secure works vertically to the wall, rather than a board and easel, to avoid any distortion.
	Make sure that your fixings are unobtrusive: visible drawing pins or tape look unprofessional. Blutack, loops of masking tape fixed behind, or even dressmaking pins are better options
	Frame your shots so that unavoidable fixings are not visible, or eliminate them by cropping the image slightly in a photo-editing program later.
	When photographing 2D work make sure that horizontal and vertical edges are parallel to the viewfinder: check the sides of the viewfinder carefully.
	Get in close to your subject.
	Use a tripod if possible and always avoid tilting the camera.
	Use a plain backdrop for 3D pieces, preferably a large roll of paper in white or a neutral grey that falls behind and under the work, so that there is no visible horizon line.
	Good lighting is essential: - For 2D work try to achieve flat overall lighting - If artificial lighting is necessary, place two identical lamps at an angle of 45^o equidistant to the work, making sure that all parts of the picture are evenly lit. - For 3D work, a raking sidelight will reveal form and texture.

Tips when scanning work

	Scanning gives very large file sizes, which can be problematic on school networks when using image software. If your computers keep crashing when editing or importing these scans, this may be the reason
	For digital media and manipulation, scan at 50% or even 25% to reduce file size.
	For output to screen and internet rather than a printer set a resolution of 72 ppi (pixels per inch).
	If your scanner does not offer the option to scan at less than 100%, use your image editing software to reduce the size of the scan by 50% or more before saving it.
	Use your image editing software’s Save for Web/Optimise for Web feature to reduce file sizes further with minimum loss of picture quality.

Extra resources

See also these tutorials on managing file sizes and creative scanning:

Getting organised! - optimising graphics for the web, email and archiving in Photoshop

Optimise images - general information

Creative scanners (Secondary) - ideas for projects

Creative scanners (Primary) - ideas for projects

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