In addition, slides are the primary means by which galleries review artists’ work. so a collection of slides is an important aspect of your record keeping. Personally I like to keep things fairly simple where taking slides are conserned and so I use a fairly basic approach. 

You will need to get yourself a 35mm single lens reflex camera. This is the kind where you are looking directly through the lens at your art as compared to a camera with a viewfinder which is not as accurate. You should regard this as an essencial piece of studio equipment. Avoid the fully automatic types, get one with manual controls so that you can ajust the aperture and shutter speed. I use a 50mm lens on mine for shooting slides. If you don’t have such a camera, start saving money now! You will need one. 

Using a single-lens reflex, 35mm camera I use Ektachrome 64 tungston film and a pair of matching 3200K tungston bulbs. You will have to go to a well equiped camera shop to find these items . When you are there they will ask you a bunch of confusing questions but just explain that you are shooting artwork and you want tungston film with matching bulbs and your not going to use a filter. These bulbs come in 250 watt and 500 watt. 

If your work is small to medium you’ll be fine with the 250 watt bulbs. If your work is large you will be better off with the 500 watt bulbs. These bulbs only have an eight hour life span and after you have used up most of that life the light starts to degenerate so keep an extra set of fresh bulbs around. But if one bulb goes out replace both so that both bulbs have about the same amount of hours and are more evenly matched. 

On the 64T film, I normally get the 36 exposure film which is a little cheaper per slide to buy and develop. Plan to shoot a minimum of three slides per each image and maybe more if you are going to make portfolios for getting in galleries. It is cheaper however, to shoot as many copies as you want than to have duplicates made later. But this assumes that your slides are as good as they can get. I’m cocky so I normally make this assumption and once in a while I am wrong and ruin all of the slides. But with enough experience you will have a pretty good idea about how well you slides will come out. 

When you are ready to take your pictures place the lamps at a 45º angle on each side of the work and at a distance so that you get even, clean light on the work. If you are photograghing sculpture or other 3-D works you will have to experiment so that any shadows help to clarify the image. Keep a notebook handy to record the information about the works that you are photographing because later the pieces might be gone from the studio and you won’t be able to label your slides properly. 

When you have taken your film to be developed and you have gotten them back be sure to label each slide with your name, the date of the work, size, title and medium. 

Once you have your slides labeled you will need to protect them so get some plastic slide sheets. These can be kept in binders so that you can easily organize, store and protect you slides. 

Other equipment you will need for photographing is a lupe which is a magnifying device for looking at slides and photoghaphs. 

A tripod for your camera. A carrying case to keep your photo equipment in, a cable release and, so that you don’t have to mask your slides, a backdrop in black, white or gray. A gray scale and color scale which is put next to the work so that printers can see it on your slide is good to have. This gives them the ability to know what ajustments that they need to make when putting your art into a magazine, poster, card or whatever. 

To find out more go down to the library and look up some books on photography or go to the bookstore and find a book on presentation in the art business section which will give exact information in a little more detail than here. The main thing to remember is that you need to keep a slide record of your work first for your self and then for getting into galleries. If you are using slides for galleries or competitions, your slides are all that anyone is going to know you by so they better be top quality! 

All paintings or other art have solutions to a variety of problems. When you are butting up against some problem in your work, you can often look at other artists’ work and find a variety of possible solutions that you can apply. Use other artists when ever you can. There is no way that you can think up everything by yourself or that your solutions will always be superior to hundreds of years of painters’ efforts. Don’t cut yourself off from history thinking that your going to be origional. Being origional comes after you have assimilated and exhausted history (at least the part that relates to your work), a feat that few truely achieve. Lean on history when you can. When you can’t, improvise. This is the fastest way to be original. 

Keep a diary of sorts in which you record your thoughts and ideas and your working notes. This might be incorporated into your sketchbook which would also include drawings, diagrams and the like. Be sure to date everything. Personally, I like to buy one of those hardbound, 8½X11 books every time I need a new sketch book. This way you can have a nice, organized shelf of books all the same size that cronical a lifetime of your work. Be sure the paper is archival and acid free so that it doesn’t fall apart on you when your fifty. I am still upset about several sketchbooks that turned yellow after only 5 years.