photographing your art quilts

Oops...somehow I missed posting this last week.  Must of had one of those moments!
Good Morning Everyone.  I am getting excited about my upcoming trip to Houston to attend the International Quilt Festival and that got me thinking about all the beautiful quilts I am going to see and about how difficult the juried selection process must be and that lead me to the main topic of today; photographing your quilts.
I have heard a lot about that topic lately and am always amazed when I hear about art quilters submitting photos for  selection in a show, or for publication in a magazine, or for a juried/curated art quilt exhibition that are out of focus, show a distracting background, hands, feet, etc., or even worse, do not show the whole quilt but have it artfully draped over a chair or railing for example, or have shadows over some of the image, etc, etc etc.  Right away you have pretty much eliminated your work from being accepted if you do not submit a good photo.  What else do jurors have to go by except the photo you have sent?  We devote so much time to our passion of creating our quilts, why not spend time on the very important step of photographing your quilt and documenting your work.  Even if you do not plan on submitting something right away, make it a habit to take quality photos of each and every quilt you make.
There have been many articles and blogs about how to take good photos of your quilts and I am giving you links to some of the recent information I have come across.
First, the SAQA rep from MA/RI, Sue Bleiweiss wrote a very good article on their regional news blog and has graciously consented to sharing it with everyone.  Here is the link
http://ma-risaqa.blogspot.com/2014/08/lets-talk-photography.html?showComment=1407618851410&m=1
 Also, Nanette Zeller, President of PAQA-S recently posted some very good advice and links about photographing your quilts and is pleased to share that information.
http://artwithaneedle.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/the-jurors-advice.html
and
http://serendipitypatchwork.com.au/blog/2014/04/05/living-colour-selection-process/

These are all great links full of very useful information and since this is getting on the long(ish) side, I'll end here, but next week I'll try to post the step by step process I use so if you have had problems in the past, this might help.

Meanwhile, I want to end with a few photos of Fall:  Cotton Fields!  They are in full bloom now with the cotton bolls just bursting out.  Beautiful!  Don't you want to just reach out and touch that cotton!

cotton fields

Cotton Field (photoshopped) from Hwy24 NC

cotton field on Hwy 17 in NC