As an artist myself, I look at a lot of art photos online and I can’t believe how poor a lot of them are. I also wonder whether artists believe it is even possible to photograph their work in good light. That’s exactly what I’m here to tell you. It’s almost as critical to know how to show your art as it is to create it.
Why do you need to take good photos of your art?
You don’t ‘need’ to take great photos of your art if you don’t want to, but let’s take Instagram as an example here.
If you take a bad quality photo of your art and post it on Instagram, your followers may not like it, because they can’t clearly see how great your art is, so they may not give it alike, and so the fewer likes it has from your followers, the less chance it has of getting shown in front of users who aren’t following you on the explorer page.
If you look on the explorer page now, you won’t see any of the really popular posts having bad quality photos. So it is crucial to take good quality images of your art if you are looking to are your art online and grow a following.
So, here are a few short pointers to consider in order to make your art photos look as good as possible:
- Photograph your work in an appropriate environment. Places, environments, and contexts that distract from the work should be avoided. Display it lying on the floor, sitting on furniture, leaning against walls, or in other haphazard or unflattering situations, for example. You want people to notice how much you care about your work and how it is portrayed. It matters where and how you show it. And how good you make it look is even more important.
- Photograph your work in an appropriate environment. Distracting locations, circumstances, and situations should be avoided. Display it in an unflattering or scattershot way, such as on the floor, sitting on furniture, leaning against walls, or in other unflattering situations. You want people to notice how passionate you are about your work and how it is presented. It makes a difference where and how you show it. And how well you present it is even more crucial.
- Photographs should always be taken at a resolution that allows viewers to see important information. Low-res images that are fuzzy or pixilated are not appealing. Some artists do this on purpose to “cover” their work, but audiences will normally move on if they can’t get a decent understanding of what it looks like.
- Keep a close eye on the lighting. There should be no places that are too dark or too bright on the surfaces. If your artwork is textured, make sure to light it so that the texture can be seen. Keep an eye out for areas of sunlight or shadows that may mask or be too close to parts of the compositions when photographing in interiors. If you point your flash directly at the art, you’ll get bright white spots, glare, reflection, and even burn. It is best to take test shots along the way to ensure that your lighting is fine.
- Use a tripod if possible to keep your phone or camera steady when recording. Blur or motion effects are no longer a problem.
- Keep your public appearances to a minimum, no matter how much you enjoy posing with your art. People would ask if your photographs are about you or your art the more you put yourself into them. You can be annoying if you do too much.
- Close-ups can be used more often if the artwork contains a lot of detail. People will appreciate your detailing skills as well as the depth of your work with good close-ups. When working with close-ups, you can use common objects like a pencil point or a brush tip to help accentuate the detail.
- Watermarks can never be used on photographs of your work. They’re not only a great way to show how paranoid you are about people attempting to copy or steal your work, but they’re also a great way to show how paranoid you are about people attempting to copy or steal your photos. In the worst-case scenario, some artists use several watermarks in horizontal or diagonal shapes, effectively obscuring whole compositions. Covering the work with writing is not the way to go if you want it to look as good as possible.
- You are not required to include copyright notices with your images. Copyright protection is automatically applied to your work. We don’t need to be reminded.
- Make sure your pictures are in focus, as simple as it might seem.
- Keep the clutter around your art to a minimum. While you may consider the art to be the focal point of a photograph, people’s eyes wander, and you don’t want them to spend more time on the backgrounds than on your art.
- Keep the artwork away from windows or other bright light sources that may interfere with it and detract from it. Keep the artwork away from windows or other bright light sources that may interfere with it and detract from it.
- When requested, colour-correct photographs. You want your art to appear in pictures as closely as possible to how it appears in person.
- Rather than editing your art into artificial interiors, photograph it in real ones. People will better visualise how your work would look in their own homes or workplaces if you show it in real-life environments.
- Using photographs of art cropped to the composition’s edges helps audiences to concentrate entirely on the work without being distracted. However, eliminating all meaning has the disadvantage of making it more difficult for audiences to picture themselves in real-life situations. So make sure to mix cropped images with photos of the art (framed or unframed) hanging or on display around familiar things like furniture or decorative pieces. Viewers will be able to get a better sense of the scale and how it will look in their homes or workplaces.
- Shoot the art directly in front of you, not from the sides, above, or below. Its shape is distorted when shot at an angle. The worse the distortion, the more severe the angle. Shoot the art directly in front of you, not from the sides, above, or below. Its shape is distorted when shot at an angle. The worse the distortion, the more severe the angle.
- Always ensure that your artwork appears as nice in your photographs as it does in a gallery. Perfectly hanging or placed art demonstrates that you care; crooked or haphazardly hung or positioned art demonstrates that you do not.
- When photographing outside, make sure your artwork is the focus of attention and stands out against the backdrop. Beautiful backgrounds may often fight for attention with the painting, detracting from the viewing experience.
- In a photograph, what’s going on around the art shouldn’t be more fascinating to look at than the art itself. Compose the entire picture, including the surroundings, rather than just your art.
- When photographing art with shiny finishes or set under glass, keep an eye out for reflections. Although removing image flaws can take some time, the end result is always worth it.
- Some pets look fantastic in art poses, while others don’t. Be frank with yourself on whether your pets enhance or detract from the viewing experience, no matter how much you love them.
- Often display the whole artworks while photographing for social media or thumbnail pictures for your website. When you crop rectangular compositions to match square formats, for example, viewers will mistakenly believe your art is square when it isn’t. Removing parts of a work to match a specific format almost always has negative consequences.
- Avoid displaying too many of your pieces of art in a single picture, particularly if they’re all very different. You, as the artist, are well aware of what you’re looking at. However, the majority of viewers would not. It’s fine to show an art-filled studio shot now and then, but seeing too many works clustered together too often can be overwhelming.
- If you see a flaw in a photograph of your work, go through it again (and again) until it’s perfect. If you’re not happy with a picture, chances are that the people who are viewing it aren’t either.
- The amount of time and effort you put into taking high-quality images of your work shows how much you care about it and how much you respect it. The more you think about something, the more people will care about it as well.
