Photographing Artwork

Are You Sabotaging Your Posts?

Photographing artwork seems simple enough, right? Point your camera or smart phone at your artwork and take the shot. In truth, how well you do it can make or break your post. Or worse yet, a sale.

I see dozens of posts every day with terrible images of artwork. To be brutally honest, I don’t even stop scrolling for them. Do you?

Photographing artwork to impress

If you care enough to post your artwork, you should care enough to do it right and make a good impression. Even if you’re still a beginner. Think about it. It’s not like a poor quality photo is going to improve your artwork. Rather, a poor image will only highlight the artist’s amateur status.

Great photos of your artwork consists of three simple points.

1. Make sure your artwork is clean and free of smudges.

This was drilled into us in art school and it’s kind of common sense. Would you turn in your project, or report, or resume with smudges or coffee stains? Enough said.

This bright light created a bright area on the cat’s head and washed it out along with a dark area at the bottom edge of the drawing. (Art Credit: Myra Naito)

2. Proper lighting.

Photographing artwork well absolutely requires proper lighting. Lighting that’s too bright washes out the artwork. Details and values (among other…