How to Photograph Your Artwork Part 3: Lighting

DIY or Professional?

You can photograph your work yourself or have it done by a professional. This can be a difficult decision. Both are expensive, but if you enjoy photography and are planning to photograph your own work for a long time, investing in equipment will cost less than hiring a photographer every time you need to photograph your work. On the other hand it would be less expensive to get the work professionally shot if you don’t shot your work that often. To photograph your work yourself, you will need to buy some equipment. The quality and price of the following items can vary greatly. You may or may not need the top of the line in every item.

Basic Equipment

2 Tota Lights
2 White photography umbrellas
2 Light stands
Camera – digital and or manual (35 millimeter capability)
Light meter
Tripod
Wireless or physical shutter opener

Lighting your artwork is the most difficult aspect of photographing your work. The main principle is simple. Keep it even. But even lighting across your painting or drawing can be difficult to achieve. The following are two different ways lighting your work:

Daylight

Daylight is a good source for lighting your work. It will cover the surface of your piece uniformly (unless obstructed). However, if it is an oil painting the sun may reflect off the shiny surface and put a big glare on the photograph. A glare on the photography of your artwork is undesirable. You want to be able to see the true color in your art work and a glare makes that impossible. If you are shooting an oil painting that is showing a glare, wait for a cloudy, but bright day. That will help.

The other challenge with shooting in daylight is the background. You want a professional background and most outside walls or grounds are not what you are looking for. You can try black, gray, or white photo paper for a back ground by taping it behind the image or painting the surface with flat or matte black paint. Whatever you use you do not want texture or glare. You can of course PhotoShop the background out.

In this image of his painting “Jetaime”, Peter Everett effectively lit his work evenly and consistently. Notice how there are no “hot spots”: all the elements of the painting seem to have equal lighting and attention.

Studio Lighting

The best thing about studio lighting is that you have complete control over it. (I’ve tried to photograph my work before outside when it was windy and I almost destroyed a painting.) You need photographer’s lights, stands, and umbrellas. The stand will let you adjust the height of the light. The photography umbrellas will disperse the light evenly. The lights need to be equidistant from the piece and coming out at a 45 degree angles from the wall at opposite sides of the art. So, there is a 90 degree angle between them and the center of the art work. This will give you the best even lighting. Some paintings will produce a glare at this angle. You may adjust the lights to see if you can get rid of it. As you do that try to keep the lighting even on the surface of the work.

It is best if you use a light meter so that you can tell for sure if the surface of the painting is lit evenly. To do this you hold the meter in front of different areas of the painting and see if the light meter reading changes.

Lighting 3-D Work

Three Dimensional work typically needs to be studio lit rather than sun lit, unless it is sight specific. The backgrounds in lighting 3-D work was covered in Part 1. The best lighting to use is a light box that hangs above and slightly in front of the work. It will evenly gradate the background. Some artists make their own light box using tungston light bulbs grouped together and a translucent sheet of plastic at the bottom. This casts even light. If you don’t have access to a light box, you could try multiple sources of light. The goal is to avoid distracting shadows in the background.

Brian Christensen photographed this sculpture “office chair” with a light box, as mentioned above. Notice how even and soft the lighting is. It provides really nice effects. Also, notice that he used a sloping gray background, which gave a clean, even gradation to the background and shadows.

Lighting Installation Work

Installation work should be photographed with the lighting it is installed with and with optimal lighting so that it can be documented well. Two lights will generally be enough with the installation lighting, but in some cases you may need more. It is very difficult to get good shots of installation work. The lighting will not always be even, but one should do the best possible job.

Shooting your own work can be fun once you get the hang of it. It would be a good idea to show the photography of your work that you do to an art photographer or a friend who gets theirs professionally shot to get some feedback from them. They may see problems that you don’t and then you can improve you technique. If this all sounds too much for you, then hiring an art photographer will be your best bet. You work is worth getting the best photography possible. Good Luck!

Part 1: Backgrounds

Part 2: Warping and Proportions