Tips on photographing your artwork.

Use a full spectrum light source. The sun, quartz halogen lights, electronic flash and certified daylight fluorescent bulbs are examples of that. This is so that the subtle colors in your artwork can have a chance to show up in the final photo.

Here is an easy way to set up to photograph your artwork.

You can set up shooting your artwork using “north light” so that there won’t be any shadows that you have to fight when you photograph your work. The best time of day to do that is between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. (The spectrum of light is more balanced during those times.)

If you are using a compact digital camera, it would be better if you used the “zoom” feature you probably have so that you are moving away from wide angle and more into a normal or telephoto range. This will help you reduce the lens distortion that you would have if you didn’t do that. For best results, your camera should be at least 5 megapixels and you should set it at the highest resolution when doing your photography. Your camera is probably set for automatic white balance. That means it will also try to find white in your picture. If it doesn’t find white, it will make the closest value to white change into white. That is where we get into trouble. If you use that sample I’ve attached, print it out and place it next to your art, there will be white for it to find. Then, all the rest of the tones should fall into place.
Stop down your diaphragm. (Make the aperture of your camera smaller.) Use a setting of at least F8, if your camera has that size. Digital compact cameras generally don't have the ability to stop down their diaphram like SLR's do. (Smaller means F11 or F16.)

This will increase the time needed for exposure. Therefore, use a tripod.

Use an 18% reflective gray card in the photo. These are official printed cards that are available at photography stores to provide for a consistent reference in all types of photography. You might also get them at art stores as mat board.

This will allow an accurate reading of the color of light illuminating your work. If you don’t have that, print out the grayscale image attached here and it will help you get closer to that. Of course, there are going to be discrepancies based on how your printer is working.

Keep your artwork and the back plane of the camera aligned so that there is no angular distortion. That is, make sure that your image is 90º from the camera.
A dark background or a neutral gray background is recommended for hanging your art to be photographed.

Group your artwork by size and shoot the same sizes in sequence. If you pieces are a standard size, mark their position with tape so that you can speed up the process between shots.

When you are done, you can import your photos into a software program like Photoshop to refine color balance and size down the images.

When you are ready, you can make the long dimension around 800-1000 pixels and send it in to mark@thenewphotography.com be put up on the YWA website where we can rotate it out with other artists.
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LINK TO GRAYSCALE FILE