Photographing Your Art - Part 1. Lighting

Now that we have a blog for WCAG members, one of the nicest features is that we have a place for you to post pictures of what you are currently doing with your art. Since good pictures are an important part of that goal, I thought it might be a good idea to share what we know about creating those pictures, and help each other along the path to better images. I'm making several posts about different topics in that area. If you have some input, feel free to comment by clicking on the "comment" in each post, or feel free to start a post of your own on a fresh topic.
I don't claim to be an expert at any of this, but I would like to share what's been working for me, which I arrived at through a lot of trial and error. If any of this helps you along any faster to better photos of your two dimensional art, then I've accomplished my purpose.
There are different schools of thought on what light to use. Some will tell you to take the art outdoors and place it in a shady spot, preferably on the north side of a building to take your picture, but that isn't always convenient.  What about those rainy days when there just isn't enough light?
As for me, I don't want to be bothered carrying my painting around (and especially not outside to get bugs in the wet paint) so I just photo it right there in my easel, but; I'm using 5000K spiral flourescent bulbs. They're readily available at many home centers and not all that expensive. The 5,000K bulbs are about as close as you're going to get (at that price) to natural daylight. Higher or lower K ratings are too warm or too cool to accurately capture your colors. K ratings are not always printed on the package, so you may have to open them and look on the bulb for them.
If you have any other thoughts to share about what kind of lighting you use, click just below here on "Comments" and tell us.
That's enough for now. Look for Part 2. Avoiding Glare

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