Some Photography Tips

Talk about and show off your El Degas instruments here.
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charles
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Some Tips

Post by charles »

First of all, thanks for sharing your photos.

Some tips for taking the best photos possible, and then sharing them easily here:

1. Use natural light sources whenever possible.
Quite often I look at my guitar photos and am disappointed by them - turns out taking guitar photos at 3 am in the basement isn't the best staging area for an appealing guitar photo. Don't do as I do - get that El Degas near a window or outside on a nice day before you take your photos.

Get away from flourescent lights whenever possible even with the adjustments many digital cameras have to compensate for the problems with them, the light still never seems to be right when you get the resulting photo.

2. Watch your flash.
Your camera's flash can easily ruin a photo - sometimes it can make some superficial surface scratches pronounced, or make a big shiny spot on the guitar from the reflection of the light.

Adjust your shooting angle or flash (some digital cameras let you tone down the flash) and see what works.

3. Watch your framing.
Sometimes it's tough to fit the whole guitar into a shot. That's fine. Often I will endeavor to take three shots of any guitar - one full-guitar shot, one body-only, and one headstock-only. Experiment and see what works for you.

Note that sometimes straight-on shots can cause problems (such as the flash problems from tip #2). Have fun with it and try different angles - sometimes a really nce top really jumps when you shoot it at an angle.

And if you are taking a photo in such a way that it will show you in the reflection on the guitar or hardware... for Pete's sake, wear pants.

4. Use an online photo sharing website to host your photos.
I find it's easiest to use an online photo-sharing website to host my photos before posting them on a forum - not only does it often make it easier to post them, it saves them online so you can post them wherever you want (such as on several forums).

Personally, I use Photobucket.com. I find it to be very easy to use and not bombard me with ads as much as some other sites.

Once you upload your photos to Photobucket, you can simply copy and paste the IMG code it provides you for each photo into a thread or post and they will show up in your post.
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