Tip #103 - Photographing Your Work

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Tip #103 - Photographing Your Work

If you are a painter, there is an easy way to photograph your work that does not require expensive professional services. Here is the equipment you need:

An easel, or something to hang your work on.
A large piece of plywood bigger than your largest painting.
A 35 mm camera with a short telephoto lens. My cameria is an old Nikon AF N4004s with a AF Nikkor 35-70 mm lens.
A tripod for the camera.
A black cloth that is not shiny--I use a black knit because it has a matt surface.
A hammer and some nails.


There are two places where you can photograph your work: either outside or inside under an opaque skylight. The light is important. If you photograph outside, an overcast day is usually better than a bright sunny day.

If you have only bright sunny days, then photograph in the morning on the shadow side of the house. Remember that any sunlight on the walls of the house or other objects will cause glare on your painting, and that the color of the house can reflect on the painting. So you need to put your setup in the best light for your situation.

If you have a big opaque skylight, that will work also. If you happen to live in San Rafael, California, the big opaque roof over the ferry terminal is ideal for photographing artwork!

The photographed image of your work should contain only the image of the artwork (not the frame) and a black background if the image does not fill the entire space of the slide or photograph. So it is a good idea to photograph your artwork before you get it framed! The other important thing is that the image should be vertically and horizonally even.

Put the big board on your easel so the center is about the same level as the top of the tripod. Cover the big board with the black cloth and hammer a nail into the board at approximately where you want to hang the paintings. When you hang the painting on the easel (I just hang them on the stretcher bars), make sure it is hanging straight up and down and is not tilted backwards or forwards. Make sure it is straight horizontally.

With a measuring tape, measure from the ground to the center of the painting. This measurement is where you want you camera to be, so adjust your tripod so the camera is at that measurement. Depending on the size of the artwork, move the tripod nearer or farther until the image fills up the space as much as possible. Use the focusing lens to adjust the image placement. You can also adjust the height of the artwork by adjusting the easel height.

Make sure that nothing other than the image and the black cloth show in the camera viewer and that everything is straight and even. A little bit off won't do much damage, but you should do your best to keep the image a good rectangle and not a parallelogram!

If I organize my artwork by size, then I can take photos of my work with minimal adjustment of the camera height and tripod placement.

Snap your photo (don't use a flash). And here's a tip about film cost. Generally speaking, it costs less to develop a roll of slides than to have duplicates made of a single slide. So what I do is to use slide film that contains 36 shots on it. That way, I can take 18 shots of two paintings. When they are developed, I put all the slides for one artwork in a archival slide sheet (which contains 20 slots for slides) and file the slide sheet in a big notebook. Then my slides are available when I need them. (Make sure the slide sheets are archival so they don't damage the slides over time.)

If you are photographing watercolors or prints, you will simply have to become more creative about how you frame the image with black and hang it before photographing. One thing that might work would be a black matt frame against a black background. If the light is right, the black frame will blend in with the black background and won't be noticeable. You must photograph your work without the glass!

Good luck with your photography! I know you can create slide images that are every bit as acceptable as the ones done by professional photographers.

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