Snap Your Art - A Practical Guide on Photographing 2D Art.
One of the things that I like the most about steemit is how people share their creations with such ease and pleasure. Go into any of the posts under the art tag and you're bound to find tons of constructive criticism and support for the fledgling artist and the professional alike.
Something that I see popping up now and again are artists whose work is great but the photographs of their work are less than flattering. That's why I'm bringing you a quick guide on how to photograph your art.
Angle
- You'll want to place your work perpendicular to the camera, as flat as possible with no inclinations to avoid skewing the perspective.
If you can hang the work on a wall or easel that allows it to be vertical that's ideal.
A neat little trick you can use to check the angle is to run a measuring tape from the camera to the plane of the artwork, there should be a 90° angle between the end of the tape and the paper.
If you have to photograph it horizontally use a tripod and tilt the head down at 90° to the piece.
Lighting and white balance
Here's where most people make the biggest mistakes. Light directly influences color, texture, visibility, contrast, and many more qualities of the photo. Your work might be breathtaking but we can't see it unless you photograph it well.
If you have zero-budget pick a cloudy day and bring your artwork close to a window. A nifty little trick to balance the light is to use a white piece of foam core or a whiteboard to bounce the light onto any areas of the painting that are not evenly lit.
If you can set up some basic lights then you'll want to place them like so:
The principles used in studio equipment can be reproduced with decent results at home. You'll need two light sources with the same type of bulb. You'll want to place them at the same distance from the artwork to get even light in the whole canvas/paper. The umbrella in front of the lights in a studio set up is used to diffuse the light, that is to make it softer so that it is evenly spread on the subject. You can achieve similar results by placing a thin white cloth 20-30 centimeters in front of the lights, or if you can get your hands on a frost filter they'll work wonders.
"But I need the photos now!" You say, "It's time for my steemit post!"
No problem, when you need the photo asap and you don't have any lights make sure you change the white balance on your camera to match the light. This is the quickest/easiest fix to your art photography there is. Here, take a look
Most DSLRs will allow you to change the "color temperature" manually so you can adjust it to fit the light.
Some reference numbers are:
- tungsten: 2700K
- common house lightbulbs: 3500K
- fluorescent bulbs: 4500K
- sunlight (overcast):6500K
But as is most likely you'll be using your phone to snap your photos. I've got you covered. You'll want to use a 3rd party camera app like VSCO iOs or its android counterpart
Distance and focal length
Make sure you fill the entire viewfinder with the artwork, you'll want to avoid composing the empty edges around the painting. Use normal to long focal length lenses, short lenses (35mm and lower) will distort the image.
Keep in mind that the main thing is your work of art, unless you're deliberately composing it with other objects the painting/drawing should be the sole object of the photograph.
Editing
- Once you click the shutter and it's all done you'll want to make final adjustments to the photograph. Level, crop, and apply final color corrections. Most apps will allow you to manipulate color, saturation, hue, etc. It's really up to you but I'd you'll probably want to preserve the original colors of the artwork. If your light was a little too yellow you can fix it by changing the white balance or color temperature in your photo editing app. Snapseed, pixlr and VSCO are all great apps to use on your mobile device. If you're working on a desktop/laptop I'd highly recommend using Lightroom to touch up your images to perfection.
Happy snapping!
I hope you found this useful. If these tips work for you let me know, share your results!
Thank you for reading, happy painting!
img credz: pixabay.com
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