We started collecting Medalta pottery about 8 or 9 years ago and have amassed a collection of hundreds of pieces. We started off with crocks and butter churns of all sizes and many different stamps. Then we moved on to just collecting the 1 gallon crocks with all the different stamps we could find and the larger crocks and butter churns all went to new homes. At one point we had over a dozen 1 gallon crocks all with different stamps, then we found a beautiful matte green lamp at an auction sale and soon the colorful pieces took over and even the 1 gallon crocks found new homes, except the one on the kitchen counter holding my spoons and whisks. Soon we had many colorful, painted pieces everywhere in the house and although we spent many hours enjoying them I never did get them photographed one piece at a time.
I started off with good intentions of taking photos of every piece before it got put away, but like all good intentions it by the wayside. Fast forward several years and there were hundreds or pieces and on the advice and gentle prodding of a wise man I decided one day that I better just get it done. So on a day off, one by one the hundreds of pieces were taken down form the shelves, cupboards and cases and I got on with the job of getting the photos done. 
The advice I would give to people is - don't put it off but do photograph each piece as you get it before it gets put away.
So on with the day of my camera being used overtime......I am luck in that I have a really good digital camera, a tripod and a remote shutter release so once I got the camera set up it was pretty easy. I used a plastic type board for the background on some pieces and the door of our Hoosier cupboard for others.
Advice on the photos themselves: Use a clean background as it will showcase your pottery better. Use a measuring stick, ruler or some other device to record the size, I have a yardstick that I taped up behind each piece, it is bright yellow so does not blend in with the pottery. Take many photos because then you can choose the best one. Try not to get too much background in the photo make the pottery the true subject and have it centered in the frame as it allows you to enlarge for better reference. Also take photos of the stamps on the bottom or any advertising or damage on the piece, it will make for better reference later.
So after I spent a good 8 hours photographing pottery it was time to look at getting the photos printed. The most economical place to get prints made where we live was at Costco and since we were going to be there in a few days anyway, I started the upload process. With over 500 photos in total it took most of the night to finish the upload but Costco still had them ready for me by noon the next day. Then it was time to get them all into albums in some kind of order so I sorted by vases, cookie jars, teapots, etc. That is how it started anyway but as time has gone on the photos are just put into the empty spaces of the next album.
The next piece of advice, again given to me by a wise man, is to put the price paid, the year purchased and where we found it on the back of each photo. So now I am back to the drawing board because I know I have not done that with any consistency so I think today I will start pulling photos out of the albums and doing that the best that we can remember.
Once again the photos are all from our own collection. I have posted some good photos and some bad photos just so you can see the difference and decide for yourself which is better. I have also attached a couple websites that talk about photographing pottery,And the Search Continues.....
http://www.sanjoaquinpottersguild.org/files/Photographing_Art.pdf
https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-photograph-ceramics-and-3-dimensional-products-with-one-light--cms-22924
No comments:
Post a Comment