Hey friends, it's Kayleigh Bird. Welcome back to my studio. You know I'm always so thrilled to have you. So today I have a sort of an easy tutorial for you, but one that I know a lot of artists struggle with. And that is how to properly take photographs of your artwork. It can be so difficult to not get like stripes and striations or shadows or whatever going on with your photo. And so I'm going to show you the easiest way using natural light because the living or not natural light is actually the best way to photograph your artwork. You might think that these artificial lights that we do in the studio is and they're really not artificial. I mean a natural is the best. So I'm going to show you how to do that. Super easy. Now you're going to see me using my Canon TI5, but you can definitely use like a smartphone or any sort of digital camera that will take a clear photo. It is not difficult at all. And I'm going to show you using this one, even though you might notice that this is not one of my most recent paintings, but basically everything I've done in the last year is covered with resin, which gives it like a glass like glare. So that's a whole another ballgame. So as you can see, this is a matte finish. So what I'm going to show you today will work for regular paintings, oil and acrylic, whatever watercolor, as well as like drawings and stuff like that. Things that aren't shiny. Now if you do have something super shiny, I also have another tutorial. I will link to that and that is actually very easy as well also using natural lighting. And last but not least, stay tuned because next week I am going to show you how to turn your photograph of your lovely painting into an art print that is ready to be sent off to the printers, including using a white border and how to format it and get the highest DPI or dots per inch. So you get a nice clear image. So stick around because next week you will see this get turned into a print using a free program that you can download online. Super easy. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy your day. If you learned a little something, please pop that subscribe button because it helps my channel so much. And it makes sure that you come back for all the good artsy information. I love you guys. You're amazing. Enjoy today. Thank you. Before you even begin taking a photo, you're going to want to think about where you are taking it. As I said, outdoor natural lighting is best. You actually want to find the time of day late afternoon before the sun sets or even an overcast day where you can be in sort of bright vivid shadow area without it being dark. You really want a very nice even kind of cool lighting ideally. You might think that the optimal time is in full bright sunlight, but it's actually not. Of course, if you have a frame that will cause shadows, but even if you don't, it's going to make your painting or drawing a bit yellow or it's too warm. Not to mention the fact that you're going to get reflection on any sort of uneven surfaces like my linen. Once you've got the perfect time of day, now you want to think about how you're going to set up your artwork. Now it definitely does not have to be hanging. In fact, usually it's pretty hard to get something to hang outside unless you put a nail inside your house. The most important thing is your stance. You want to be parallel as perfectly parallel as you can to your artwork. That way it will come out nice and even within the viewfinder and you won't get the warping that can happen sometimes when taking photos. I'll show you that next. So this is what happens if you wind up going too low, you're going to wind up with an image where the top is skewed farther from the bottom. Conversely, if you photograph from too high, then your image will be skewed as the bottom will look farther away than the top. Last but not least, you want to make sure you're not too close up. Now this can seem kind of strange because the closer you are, the more your image will fill your viewfinder and you would think that you would get more detail. However, it is actually better for you to be farther back and then zoom in just slightly. And the reason being, if you are too close, your image will bow out. If you notice the frame, although it is centered, it is slightly bent and that is due to the round nature of lenses. So hopefully you end up with a nice crisp, clear, even, straight, bright photograph. But this is only the beginning. I hope you stick around next week because I will show you how to take your photograph and edit it using free software into this beautiful, high resolution image. And then I'm going to show you how to get a nice white frame around it so it is ready for printing. And in case you are curious how I do my sketchbook flatlays, it is just about the same method. I use the nice lighting I try to make sure that my stance is not too close, become parallel to the ground and take photos. Now I usually want it taking 20 or 30 photos and then picking the crispest one after that. Thanks for being here guys. I hope you learned a little something. If you do, make sure you hit that subscribe button so I'll see you again next week.