backglass cleanup

Well I took the best photo I could, and I'm still not satisfied with the results.  There's shadowing from my dark basement, and if I use lighting I either get hotspots or reflections.  also because the camera is so far away, the image isn't as sharp as it could be.

I think I want to do two things:
1. Take the photos outside on a cloudy day (to prevent reflection), but still have enough light to give natural color
2. Take 4 separate photos to increase detail, and also prevent the perspective skewing you get with an image.

This blog sort of talks about it, but it doesn't really go into detail HOW he took the photos.  I would imagine you'd want to at the very least use a tripod, but you'd also want to make sure the camera were perfectly perpendicular to the backglass everytime, otherwise when you merge them together your going to have uneven sizes (and it will never line up right).
http://tuukan.fliput.net/bglass_en.html