Scanner Art

Scanner art, is not always as easy as it may first appear.

Just scanning something does not necessarily make it art.

Professional artists often take hours, if not days, weeks and in some cases months to create their masterpiece!

In one of the photography forum discussions regarding scanner art, someone asked ... "How could anyone call that art?"

The same thing was once said about taking pictures with a camera!

Warhol, scanography, scanner art, soup can
A camera takes pictures, some images may be considered art others are not. The photo scanner is just another process to captures images. This question comes up regarding any new art form or technique.

The masses determine what art is, and they don't always agree. Remember Andy Warhol's 1968 soup can?

Whether you think scanography is art, craft or hobby, the images are rich, hyper-real and often powerful.

Is it photography? That's another subject up for debate. Read more about the scanner/photography argument.

Beginner? Don’t be intimidated by the word art! Sometimes a simple scan can be beautiful! For some easy-to-create subjects, take a look at some new Easy Art.

The Stages of Scanography as Art

Find interesting and creative subjects
Placement on the photo scanner bed
Juggling and Retakes
Digital darkroom

The Search for Creative Subjects

People who use scanners to create art are imaginative people.

(Link to professional scanographers is at the bottom of this page.)

They use everything from nuts and bolts to vegetables. And although there are an endless number of subjects, nature seems to be the most popular.

Amaryllis photo, exotic flowers, scanography, scanner photography

If you're fortunate enough to have exotic flowers in your yard, use them. These amaryllis are from my yard. Sometimes even weed flowers work wonderfully!

Other places to find fresh flowers are open air markets and even the grocery store.

Otherwise, the local florist may become your new best friend.

Fruit and vegetables also fascinate me as photo scanner art subjects. Lots more ideas on the Food Art pages.

scanner art, scanography, scanner photography, pumpkin photo, dried leaves

Leaves have fascinating shapes and can be just as beautiful dried as they are while they are colorful.

An autumn walk should give you plenty of subjects.

Mix them with fall vegetables and fruit.

Scanner art sources of inspiration are personal and endless.

Placement

Here comes the artistic part. After selecting a great subject or two, the creative process continues with: placement.

When planning a composition, place everything as if you are in the scanner looking up. This is vital.

See a step-by-step simple composition here.

Don't be concerned with deleting images as you go. You can always remove the shots you don't like later.

Juggling and Retakes

Just keep scanning. After your first scan, rearrange the same items and scan again. The repositioning of a subject may change everything!

The Digital Darkroom

This is where you clean things up, crop, resize and sometimes add your own flavor. Many artists use Photoshop to add a personal unique touch to their scanography.

Plan your work in the digital darkroom when you have time to spend - hopefully without interruptions. Stay organized - many scanographers also do "real photography". Keep the two filed separately.

A Google software called Picasa is a great free organizational tool. It’s also good for resizing, quick editing and sending photo emails.

scanography, scanner art, scanner photography, daisy
Those are green aphids crawling around on the daisy!

After you save your original scans it’s time to take a second look. Look at your images close-up, very close-up.

This is when you delete a few, remove dust, fix a hole in a leaf or even get rid of a bug you never saw.

I now tap all flowers lightly before scanning. It helps resolve the tiny bug problem.

Use your Photo Editor for these oops and uglies.

Some great advice from scanography artist Patri Feher:

"DO NOT under any circumstance reduce the number of pixels! Make a duplicate image and reduce that one to 'fit' on your web page. Keep your original images in an archive and practice your retouching skills on a copy! Someday you'll thank me."

Your Masterpieces

Now that you have your very own special pieces of scanner art ... frame a couple, use them on your website and try some of these other Uses for Scanography.

Remember, different web applications take different sizes and shapes. While changing sizes and shapes ALWAYS save your original image!

scanner art, scanography, black and white
Do you enjoy black and white pictures?

Use your photo scanner to create some unique shots! See the fun, artsy kitchen scans on the Black and White pictures page.

The Professional Scanographers

The scanner art you see on professional web sites is rarely, if ever, the original scan. There have been numerous "tweaks" along the way.

Some artists use Photoshop and other software to a great extent. Others purposely try not to change the original image, but to perfect it ever so gently. Scanning three dimensional items with a scanner is a relatively new art technique. Study their work.

See some of my favorite scanographers here.

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