5 Tips for Photographing Your Art

One of the most frustrating tasks an artist faces is how to effectively photograph their art.  I've tried every method.  I have a book on the subject, I've scoured the internet, received advice from professional photographers, and still haven't found one way that works every time.

But there are tricks you can use that work in different circumstances.

Trick #1 - Controlling the light when photographing indoors.

Okay, you've set up your artwork in a space where you can control the ambient light - either at night, or in a hall or a room where you can close the blinds.  You have your camera on a tripod, and your lights angled at 45 degrees from the work and positioned behind your tripod.  But you still get glare, particularly with oil paintings. 

Try setting your camera on automatic timer, then holding a sheet of vellum up in front of the light fixture responsible for the glare - a little experimentation is helpful. I've found cupping the paper slightly to bounce the light up toward the ceiling works. The vellum will diffuse the light.  You will still get good illumination and avoid those hot spots.

Trick #2 - Taking your paintings outside.

When I first started photographing my artwork outside, I followed the advice to do it in the shade.  I was using slide film and was able to get beautiful photographs.  But with my digital camera this is not the case.  Often the colors appear too blue, no matter how I change the white balance. 

Now I photograph dry paintings in direct sun, at about a 45 degree angle, using my tabletop easel set on the ground.  This means I have to bend down at an awkward angle, but if the painting is angled flatter, it reflects more glare.  I've found that using the automatic settings on my camera seem to work best, rather than adjusting the white balance, but I'm also in the northern part of the country and the sun is in a different area of the sky.

Trick #3 - Learn to use Photoshop

As long as your image is in focus and the colors are accurate when you upload your image, there's a lot you can do using Photoshop to clean it up.  As a safety precaution, duplicate the image before manipulating it. 

If, when you use the cropping tool, you realize your image is skewed enough to significantly alter the appearance, try using Transform first. Under Image, click on transform and then on skew.  You can adjust the image fairly easily by pulling up the corners, but when you're finished, your image will be automatically saved as  PS or Photoshop image. Go ahead and save it, then open it again and click on Edit - Save As - and select jpeg.  

 Here is a detail of an untouched image, showing the white dots where the pixels have no color.  This is a common issue when photographing oil paintings due to the nature of the oil paint and the textured surface.  

Here is an easy method to use to correct your image.

Start by opening your thumbnail.  Using CTRL and the + sign, enlarge the image so you can begin to see the details.  You'll notice white dots - these are areas where reflected light tricked your camera into seeing white, and can otherwise ruin a nice image. 

Click on the clone tool.  Something that looks like a bullseye opens up on your image.  Hold this icon over a color adjacent to the white dot that you want to eliminate. While holding down the ALT key, left click your mouse - this action picks up the color.  Then simply move the bullseye over the white dot and left click  without holding the ALT key - stamping the color.

Here is the corrected image.  It's a simple solution, and with a little practice you'll be cleaning up your images like a pro.  

As you're working, you may find it necessary to increase the magnification of the pixels. Just press CTRL and + until you can clearly see what you're doing.  Then to check our image, use CTRL and the - sign to reduce the image size.

If you look closely, you can see the three darker green dots just above the orange curve of this pear. This is a .5 in the brush preferences, which shows up in the tool bar at the top of your screen once you activate the clone stamp tool. Play around with the sizes of the brush preferences (sizes of the dots) - too small and it takes forever but too large can be too obvious.

  Be sure to save the image frequently, as I have learned the hard way that 20 minutes of tedious work can be lost through one careless click on the mouse.

Tip #4 - Crop your image

This tip is not really for you but for all those other artists who think a photo of their painting should include that bright gold frame because it looks so much better than just the image. And why not show some of that doily that you set your painting on, too, because after all it sets up a nice homey contrast.  Or maybe the green plant.  Or the dog that just happened to walk into the image. 

Tip #5 - Use a professional for the important images

For your record keeping, any image will do. For your web page portfolio, a clean, cropped, appropriately bright and contrasted image is perfect.  You can check your histogram first ( look in the Image drop down menu) - it should look like a bell curve, which indicates how the camera was reading the brightness, and you can adjust up or down.  Bear in mind that color varies from monitor to monitor and you can make yourself crazy trying to fine tune everything. If it looks good on your computer, then check out your site on two or three other computers, using different browsers. If you're happy with the results let it go. 

But if you are submitting to important shows or juried organizations, or preparing images for postcards, you may want to use a professional photographer.  Find one who specializes in photographing products or artwork.  The photographer I use has been generous with his knowledge and helped me learn how to do much of the photography work on my own - which is definitely more convenient and less costly.  Try to find one who will share their knowledge with you, too.

It's important to keep good photographic records of the work you produce, and to be able to pull together professional images on short notice.  So for me, it was also important to take the time to work through the various problems I encountered while photographing my work.  I hope you will experiment with some of these simples fixes with your next painting.

Comments

[sue smith]

I'm using a Sony Cybershot with 7.2 megapixels, which is more than you need for posting to the web, so I use Photoshop Elements with my images and "Save for Web" - resizing them down. My first camera was a Cannon Power Shot S230 with 3.2 megapixels which worked fine for the web, but didn't give me the high resolution files I needed for printing or for sending to newspapers/magazines.

[Frederick Ross]

What's thr best camera for this? Should there be a minimum pixel type of digital camera for best results?

[Bonnie Luria]

Many thanks for this very comprehensive and specific tutorial, really.

I'm going to transfer this to a word doc, print it out and add it to my artists tools notebook for quick and easy to follow reference.

These are problems that seem to plague all of us.

PS- a photographer friend suggested taking the painting outside on my covered deck ( faces North ) and standing directly over the painting which is on the floor. Seems to also work well to eliminate glare.

[Margret Short]

Thank you so much, Sue, for this invaluable photoshop tip. I was unaware these hot spots could be eliminated at all, much less so easily. Jandi's tip using the black foamcore is splendid too. I am going to try this next time I have to photograph my paintings. Margret

[Margaret Ryall]

This is just what I needed. Thanks for taking the time to put it together. My photographs of my work are so bad I have to keep describing what the work is really like.

[vicki ross]

good stuff here!

[Jandi]

Great tips and tricks, Sue! Here is something that helps me: I have a large piece of black foamboard with a lens-sized hole cut in it. With my camera on a tripod I position this in front of the camera (with the painting in open shade) and it "kills" all the reflections coming off the painting's surface.

[Janelle Goodwin]

Thanks for these tips, Sue. I'm always getting glare when I photograph my work (oils) and it's so frustrating. I'm going to try the vellum tip!