Photography of Fine Art for Giclee and Portfolio
Sometimes art work is just too big to scan on even the largest scanners. This is where high resolution photography comes in. Although almost anyone can take a photo of a painting or drawing, making an image that is suitable for turning into a Giclee print or submitting to an important contest, grant or exhibition requires special equipment and a great deal of experience.
Shooting Art Work is a Specialty Requiring the Best Camera and Lens
Some artists do photograph their own work or have friends shoot their work for them; digital cameras have gotten amazingly good. Although this is fine for a record of your art work, if you are serious about having your work photographed for printing there are a number of difficulties with this approach. Photos made with inadequate cameras are a constant problem we see. But we also see art work shot with the wrong lenses (zoom lenses should never be used to shoot art), incorrect lighting, distortion, focus and camera shake issues. Shooting art work is a specialty that even few professional photographers are experienced in.
Professional Lighting is Mandatory to Get Proper Color
Our professional art duplication studio meets the needs of artists looking to make prints or just needing professional photography of their work for publication or submission. Our camera and lighting setup can even reduce reflections on heavily varnished paintings that would be nearly impossible to scan with even the most expensive scanners. We can also make sure that the texture you want is preserved. Best of all our system for digitizing a large art work for Giclee printing is noticeably cheaper than a comparable scan.
Murals and Large Work Photographed on Location
Although artists normally bring work to us we also go on location to artists studios, museums or galleries to produce portfolio quality reproductions for print. In addition we can photograph murals and installations in architectural settings. In fact we have over 25 years of experience documenting on location in Minneapolis - St. Paul and the Twin Cities metro area and throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Artwork copyright by B-J Norman, Vasa Lutheran Church and Dan Wiemer.
The solution for capturing large works on paper, canvas and even murals on the wall is high resolution digital photography. Using the most sophisticated 36 megapixel digital cameras, special flat field copy lenses, Polarized filtered lighting and the new Manfroto Digital Director we are able to produce digital images that rival even the best flatbed scanning. In fact many of our clients find our images preferable to large format art scanners like the Cruise scanner.
