What makes a great arrowhead pic?

[wanderingrock]

Finally found my charger for my camera, and thought I'd start taking pictures of my collection. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for taking a good arrowhead pic. What are some favorite backgrounds to use? What's the best kind of light? Here's one I did a little experimenting with. This was my first find. I found it in the tidal flats of a lagoon off the Columbia River many, many years ago.

[sizemore]

Hey great find! In my case, the backgrounds don't really matter. It's the setting on my camera.

[wanderingrock]

I looked at your pickwick shot.  It is great.  Fantastic use of the sun, and good composition.  Something I hadn't seen in an arrowhead in the hand pic before.  I'm going to take some ideas from that one.

[wanderingrock]

I thought this was a site for buying, selling, and musing over arrowheads.  Think of this stuff as digital packaging.  Don't you think you have some tips to share that might help improve our pics?  How about some examples of the best shots you've seen.
Here's another of the same arrow without anything else in the scene.  Do you think it's better or worse than the other?

[wanderingrock]

Here's one I found near Fort Rock Or..  It's a black jasper, or onyx.  I haven't been able to identify it yet.  Some help there would be appreciated.  Again I'm just playing with color trying to get a good pic.
 

[wanderingrock]

One more thing.  How about suggestions on the use of text?
 

[gregszybala]

Your asking for advice? Those are some really nice pics> How do you do it and how do you get the text on there as well? That would be a great aid to identifing and cataloging.

[CliffJ]

I like the full package, with the red shadow.
But you might change your provinence to provenance. But it's a good pic for sure.

[Wildhorse]

I like to play with the artifacts to get different ways to show them. Post some a while ago. Will look in my file and see if I can find some to post here.

[wanderingrock]

I like the one with the rock for a background.  I'm going to try that.
As far as the red glow goes it's a clever use of layers and blurring that I use in photo shop.  The letters are made by creating a new top layer, and using the text tool on the selection text setting.  This creates a hollow text that you can fill with whatever you want.  In this case I took a clone stamp from the arrowhead itself to use as a filler for the text.  I guess if someone wanted, and they have photo shop cs2 or better, I could walk a person through the process.  It would take a little while, but others following the posts should be able to recreate it when we were done.  It might make a cool project if someone is game.

[gregszybala]

Thanks Wanderingrock, gotta try that out.

[panaggie]

Geez, Wildhorse. Those are some fantastic pieces. Would you type the one in the center a Cascade?
Thanks Bob

[Wildhorse]

Hi Bob; Yes that is a Cascade off the mid Columbia River. A real one in a thousand with the work and material.

[Wildhorse]

Found another of my photo's I like. Glass on glass

[wmwallace]

The pic with the text and info is a spectacular idea to me. That would make superb corner photos for typing and journal keeping of artifacts. Might try that myself, however without my son's involvement, I am about two shakes from film at 11 posting pics on the computer. THanks guys for the ideas, they look good.