PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR ART - COMMON ERRORS

December 14, 2022
READ TIME:  5 minutes

Image retouching software has advanced considerably over the past few years, and even the photo editing features found on smartphone cameras can be more than enough to make simple image adjustments. (A newer Android phone reportedly even allows you to correct blurred photos you may have taken using its camera!) While color temperature corrections can usually be done in a snap, there are a few other errors that can leave you with images that either require too much time to fix or, in some cases, may end up nearly beyond repair.
So before moving on to basic lighting setups, let's look at a few common mistakes that can occur when photographing your art.

It's tempting to think that the handy little pop-up flash on the top of your point-and-shoot camera or even your DSLR can magically give you the perfect light for your artwork. Sure, in some instances, it may possibly be the best solution for a specific artist, but this would likely only be the case if your medium is a material that dries matte. If you work in glossy acrylics or oils or even in colored pencils that often leave a waxy surface sheen, taking a photo of a piece using an on-camera flash while standing directly in front of the art is bound to leave you with a host of unwanted reflections. (…And likely with a few tears if you realize too late you didn't get a good shot of your beloved work before selling it off.)

Compare the following two images of a colored pencil piece. The first one uses pop-up flash and you can immediately notice the loss of contrast compared to the other, better-lit image. Even worse, you've lost a considerable amount of your precious pencil details as a result of the direct flash bouncing its light right off the pencil wax. Harsh! That could take you forever to try to recover in an image editing program. Notice I used the phrase "try to recover". While I'm sure there are tech-savvy artists who may be able to salvage an image like this, why not just make an effort to shoot the photo correctly from the get-go?

As for sculptures, if you intend to use direct on-camera flash, be mindful of the shadows that type of lighting can cause. Also, consider the fact that this kind of flash has a tendency to flatten the image space, and if your sculpture is a truly dynamic build, you may lose that perception of depth.

One of the principles taught in junior high science class was that different light sources have different color temperatures: warm or cool or somewhere in between. (I must have been asleep that day in school, as I had to re-learn this at a later point in life…) And while most newer smart phones are fairly good at matching color temp settings with the corresponding light source, sometimes point-and-shoot cameras need a little more tweaking to get the ideal shot. Since it's not within the scope of this resource page to cover the settings of every single camera or smartphone available, I'll simply refer you to your device's user manual. (And perhaps now might be a good time to mention that many cameras refer to this setting as "White Balance".)

But I will say that the colors of your images should be true to life, especially if you're photographing your art with the intention to sell. Reds should be red, greens should be green, and white should be white, not an orange-y color or a bluish tint. (Unless you want an extremely flustered client calling you from halfway around the world, demanding that you explain the discrepancy between the colors in the photos of your art & the colors in the actual piece you just shipped!)
Here's an in-progress fashion illustration of mine drawn on paper that's a little above 90% white. I intentionally used an incorrect white balance setting on each variation and, well, you can see the unwelcome results for yourself:

So do your best to match your camera's settings with the light source you're using. If you're unsure about the type of bulb or the color temperature, most cameras have an Automatic White Balance setting that can usually provide a decent image. Just be mindful of the fact that if you do use AWB and you're taking multiple photos of the same piece of art (or even of different works in one sitting), there could possibly be slight differences in the white balance across all the images.

As I've already mentioned, the goal is to have representational, true-to-life colors in your art photos, because your potential clients deserve a fairly accurate portrayal of what they're purchasing. Afterwards, your photos could likely use some adjustments in image retouching software, but at least you'll have less corrections to make & a better image to work from once you reach that stage.

If you're in a rush, it's easy to hastily lean your drawing, painting, or etching against a wall or staircase and grab a quick snapshot of it. Or you might toss it on a table and take a pic from wherever you're standing, unaware that in any of these situations you're likely introducing a distorted perspective into the photo, as in the following example:

Okay, so now you have a drawing of a model with big feet and a disproportionately smaller face. Not too big of a deal, as retouching software on desktops & even on some smartphones allows you to easily correct this in a few seconds (…and most department stores sell shoes in a wide variety of sizes 🤣) But one major concern regarding photos with a distorted perspective is that, depending on your camera's aperture, you could end up with only part of the image in focus. And that's much more difficult to truly correct in post-editing. Take a closer look at the exaggerated example of mine above. Notice that the model's shoes and the bottom of her dress are moderately sharp in the image; however, it's very difficult to try to discern further details in her upper arms, shoulders, & especially in her face, because all those areas are out of focus. Not good!

If you've done some landscape photography, you're familiar with how to extend focus to near infinity. But this isn't an outdoor nature setup where we're trying to capture an endless horizontal horizon. And ideally we shouldn't be trying to increase depth of field to photograph a slanted piece of art. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with the setups I described at the start of this section. Not all artists have an exclusive area for photographing their artwork, so it's okay to lean your art against the wall or set it on a table. But wherever you set up your art, you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you shoot it from a straight-aligned perspective standing or crouching directly in front of it, instead of from some awkward, indirect angle. More on this in the Lighting Setups section.