For students
Spend some time finding a good place to set up where you will take pictures throughout the semester.
Things to think about when finding a spot to photograph your work:
Is it easy to get to?
How is the lighting? Do you need to add light?
Where will you place it while you photograph it? If you don’t have a tripod, consider hanging your work on a wall, leaning it vertically, or placing it on an easel. Avoid taking the photo from above, as your body can often cause small but bothersome shadows.
Use a tripod. (if possible) If you are documenting a piece of paper, take a picture of your work while still attached to a board or a flat surface to keep your image as accurate as possible.
Use a tripod. (if possible) If you are documenting a piece of paper, take a picture of your work while still attached to a board or a flat surface to keep your image as accurate as possible.
Why did I decide on this? Why is it important?
Distance teaching and learning means adapting to what’s available for you to use. I want my students to focus on the specific topics of the course I’m teaching and right now that’s painting and drawing. But walking around the classroom and sharing the works in progress was always a big part of these classes and I want to keep it that way with our online classes.
I don’t want my students to focus on documenting their work and editing the photos, as this can take a lot of time. However, taking photos and documenting properly is important. Poor lighting, bad perspective, and incorrect cropping can incorrectly reflect the actual work created. This video shows users of Microsoft Teams a quick, easy solution to simplify this process as much as possible in order to produce the best results in the shortest amount of time.
What’s Needed
If your school or business has a SharePoint Online license, then One Drive is available for free through Microsoft 365 or Office 365. The University of Houston offers this!
Tips For Teachers
If you don’t use Microsoft Teams, find another ‘scan’ app that is free to use, that uses a cloud service and this basic cropping feature. (Adobe scan is good one)