What is the best way to take good pictures of your art?

Question

I am interested in having a good digital portfolio of my art. To put up on a web site, send to family and just have as a record. What is the best way to get quality digital photos of my framed pieces (most of them are framed). I would rather do this myself rather than have another expense. I have a decent digital camera.

Answer 1

Diane is quite right.However to keep things simple I often photograph my artwork out of doors on a dull day,or in shade.White balance I custom set from a sheet of white paper and exposure I take manually from the back of my hand (I'm white and English so my skin tone is like a grey scale card) Reflections can be removed with a Polarising filter but out of the frame is better.Shooting at a slight angle can get rid of reflections but you will need to correct perspective in Photoshop,or similar.This has worked for me professionally for a number of years some of my work was at an outdoor Sculpture park with very large works.For studio practise see previous user's most erudite suggestions.

Answer 2

Well i also make a lot of photos of my work and i think it's best to do it in daylight, make sure the room where you make the photos is well lighted, if you do it in the evening with lamps the colors of your work change a lot. I don't know what kind of art you make but is it framed behind glass? If it is you should probably take it out since the glass can reflect a lot of light into your camera and you'll get white spots in your photo. Stand directly in front of your work to make the photo but also make sure your shadow is not visible in the picture, it's best to not have the sun point directly at your work. In my room the sun never shines straight into my window but there's still a lot of light, i think that's the best.

I hope i helped you with this, i'm sorry if some sentences are not fully clear to you but i dont really speak english

Answer 3

Is there any way you could remove your artwork temporarily? I ask, because the glass is going to give glare from any strong light source that is close. You want to set up diffuse lighting around your artwork; this can be achieved with three lights with a dryer sheet over them to make the light softer, or more diffuse. You want to reflect this light off of the ceiling and walls around the work, but not off the work itself - the goal is to evenly light all around your artwork. The lights should all be facing different angles, at least 1 above, 1 right, plus 1 left of the artwork. You should have your artwork standing at 90 degrees or as close to it as possible. The background should be even and beautiful. You can use a dropcloth or a solid wall for this. Make sure to use a tripod for your camera. This is for stability, and the stability is to minimize camera shake, so your picture turns out clear. If you are using a typical consumer camera with zoom, make sure to start farther away from your artwork and zoom in on it - this will make sure that it will be in better focus; it will also avoid lens distortion from being too close. Your camera body should be parallel to your artwork (facing it head on). Do not use flash. Make sure your digital camera setting is set to high resolution, and be sure to leave room around your piece of artwork, so you can crop it effectively after the photos are taken. Take several shots of each piece, as sometimes photos that look good on your camera don't look so hot when you look at them at normal size. For faster upload/download time, edit the resulting pictures by cropping them to your liking, then adjusting the ppi(or dpi) to appropriate web standards (keep in mind that monitors are 72-96ppi nowadays, so you'll need to reduce your image size before uploading to the web, otherwise the photos will turn out huge). There are shareware photo editing programs available if you google for them. Save the edited pictures as different files from the originals, so you always have the originals to work from if you want to make any changes, or to print from with high resolution. There. I feel like this has just skimmed the surface, but hopefully it gave you and idea about how to go about it. If you want to learn more about photography, check out the TwiP podcast (no affiliation). Cheers.

Answer 4

then the best way is to put some batteries in your camera, turn it on, point it at the thing which you want a photo of  and press the button to take the picture :)