How to Take Quality Digital Photos of Your Artwork

It is important for an artist to have good quality images of their work for posting on web sites and comprising portfolios. If left up to professionals, this can result in added expenses which, to an artist on a limited budget, can take a big chunk out of his or her earnings. That is why its a imperative to learn how to take your own photos. This simple article will explain how to get things just right.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• moderate to high quality digital camera
• lighting
• tripod
• easel

1. Lighting
   The best time for photo taking is between 11 am and 2pm on a sunny day.
   You will want to find the brightest room in your house, but do not place the painting in direct sunlight. Next, turn on all overhead lighting. If this is still not enough light, you can set up directional lighting to point at your artwork, or bounce it off the walls near your painting. Never use a flash. You will want to photograph your work before it is framed behind glass or varnished, as these surfaces will reflect the light and your shots will have glare and sparkles.

2. Positioning for photographing
   
   Once you have found the best spot for your art based on lighting conditions, you will want to place it on an easel that is adjusted at a 90 degree angle. Set up an additional lighting around your painting if necessary. Next position your camera on a tripod that is directly inline with your painting. Neither position the tripod too high or too low so that it is either pointing up or down at your painting. This will distort the image. It is very important to use a tripod as this will prevent the image from coming out blury. I like to position the tripod about 3-4 ft from my artwork

3. Once you have positioned the tripod and painting, find the photography mode that best suits your subject. You may have to play around with this until you decide what works best for you. If you use a setting with a longer exposure time, that will let in the most light. I find that different coloured paintings will react with different settings, so take different shots using different settings, taking note of the changes.

4. If you are taking photos of large paintings, zoom in to fill up your screen with the artwork. If you are taking photos of small pieces, I find it is better to take a wider shot, leaving about half of the background in and then later using a computer program such as paint or photoshop to crop out the background. This way you will reduce the detail of the shot that might tend to pick up the grain of the paper or canvas and you'll get a smoother look to your painting. Remember to turn your flash off.

5. After you have taken many different shots of your painting, upload them to the computer using a photo editor such as picassa or photoshop. Here you can further crop the image if you have some background to remove, or you can brighten the photos and enhance them if they came out dark or washed out. Once you are happy with the images you can then save them and upload them to your website or make photo cards from them, as discussed in a previous article.

Tips & Warnings

• If you don't get the shots right the first time, try moving the easel to a different location. Sometimes overhead lights can put glare on a painting, so moving it back a foot or two can solve that problem.
• If you still can't get the light right indoors, try taking the photos outside in a shady location such as a carport or under a canopy or patio umbrella
• If you don't have a tripod you can set up the camera on a table, adjusting its height by adding books under it.