Photographing your painting
Mike,
I think you have confused me with Chris Saper and Karen Wells. We are easily distinguishable, they have all the talent in the world, and I'm the one filling the paper cups with punch.
At the above link you will see a couple of threads, lead mostly by the above ladies, which discuss in some detail how to photograph your paintings.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of our job. I have settled on one of two ways. First, I try and photograph my painting much the way I do my subject, in natural light indoors, using all the bracketing and common sense tools that I can muster. If this doesn't work I take the painting to a photo lab in town and have them make slides and prints using a studio light set up.
I sometimes have to smile at the talk about - one can only get the correct flesh tones by painting from life or by moonlight or whatever. Having done all that, we then mount this horrific assault on these perfectly rendered tones with a combination of il-suited film, poorly trained lab techs, lousy scanners, low viscosity monitors, non polarized sunglasses and on and on.