A good image is essential to selling your art online, that is why we have included this tutorial to help you take better photographs of your art.

Good Photos Are Important
It is said that a picture is worth 1,000 words and in no place is that more evident than in the art world. It is likely very difficult to describe your artwork in just a few words, but with one good photo of your work, a person can see even minor details. This is important because most people like to feel as if they are actually holding the piece of art they are looking at. They want to see the texture, the size, the colours; they want to be able to imagine the piece is in their hands. For this connection with the customer to take place, you must have a good photo of your piece and represent it in the best possible way.

Despite what many people believe, taking good photos of your art is relatively easy if you know what you're doing; however, using a professional photographer or someone with experience is recommended if you have little experience in photography.

If you have some photography experience and are planning to photograph your own work, here are some tips that may help you along the way.

This tutorial is broken up into the following sections. If you wish to view a particular section of the tutorial, simply click on the link.

• General Tips
• Tips For Paintings and Photography
• Tips For Pottery And Sculpures
• Tips For Jewellery
• Build Your Own Light Tent
• Image Editing Software

• Keep your background clear of clutter and if possible use a background that is a consistent color. Excessively bright spots or dark spots in the background are distracting and will take the focus off of your art. If you are using a backdrop try to avoid wrinkles or buckles in the fabric.
• Use high contrast and brightness when photographing your art.
• Photograph light items on a dark background and dark items on a light background.
• When photographing 3-Dimensional artwork, such as pottery, sculptures and other works, use a neutral, light colored background when the item is dark. If the item is light, try a darker background to allow for good contrast.
• For 2-Dimensional artwork, such as paintings or photographs, it's better if the background is lighter than the frame. Shooting images of framed versus unframed work is discussed in the next section on paintings and photography.
• If the art is translucent (i.e. light passes through it) - like glass, film or other sheer material, photograph it with light passing through it. The light source should be behind the art but not visible to the camera. Also, try not to let anything else show through the translucent parts.
• Put the camera on a tripod or other stable surface. Holding the camera in your hands may cause "camera shake", resulting in a blurry image that is out of focus.
• Make sure rectangular work, such as paintings and photos, are straight, and the whole surface is in focus.
• If it hasn't been mentioned already, Focus, Focus, Focus.

Prep Work
The first step in photographing your artwork is to get everything together. This involves:

• Choosing a camera
• Gathering all the artwork you want to shoot
• Cleaning any artwork framed in glass to remove smudges and dust
• Having fresh batteries in the camera or at least on hand
• Getting a roll or two of film (if you are using film)

If you are shooting digital, you will want to:

• Make sure you have the memory; clear a card if you need space
• Install any software you need to get images and to manipulate them
• Set up cables for connecting your camera to your computer

Note: We would recommend using a digital camera to photograph your work if possible for the following reasons:

1. You will not waste money on photos that do not turn out right.
2. You can view the results of your photos right away.
3. You can quickly and easily get your photos onto your computer where you can manipulate them and upload them to the web.

Choose Your Lighting
By far the best thing you can do to make great photos of your artwork is to carefully choose your light. "How do I choose my light?" you ask. Simply override the automatic flash function on your camera. Shoot outside on an overcast day or utilize indirect light, i.e. shade. If you're shooting inside, shoot in a bright room with big windows.

The best light for photographing artwork is overcast or indirect natural light. Resist the urge to resort to flash unless you absolutely have to, for example if the day is really dark and dreary, your images may pick up a blue cast. Dig out your camera manual if you have to and set your flash to off. This will ensure your beautiful paintings or photos will not be hidden behind a layer of distracting glare.

Sometimes you may want to try adding extra light. Your situation - your art media, your camera, your weather - may make it so that pictures shot with a flash are more accurate. In the following example, the flashed picture is not too far off from the original. The non-flashed image is a bit oversaturated but still has more color and detail than the slightly washed-out image. Either of these images, with a little help from photo editing software such as Photoshop, can be made more accurate. Without going digital, we would opt for the richer, more colorful image than the flashed image. You will especially note the difference if you click on each image to see the enlargement. After viewing the large photos, simply click your browser's back button to return here.

flashed image

non-flashed image

Against The Wall
In order to get the best image, you may find it easiest to lean your paintings or photos against an exterior wall. Keep the paintings safely tucked under an overhang or otherwise protected from the elements and be cautious on an overcast day that they do not get wet. You may be asking yourself "Why not just leave them hanging on my interior wall?" The reason is that the light inside is usually much worse than indirect light outdoors. However, in a clean, well-lit room, you can leave your artwork on the wall and shoot it where it hangs. Once again this is about experimenting to get the best possible outcome. It is likely you will take a few shots of each piece to get a really nice shot, which is a great reason to use a digital camera rather than a film camera.

Keep It Straight
Whether you choose to lay the art flat or lean it up against the wall, it is important for you to shoot the artwork straight on, without skewing the frame or edges by leaning one way or the other. Try to keep the camera completely parallel to your painting. Use a tripod or other steady surface if you have a difficult time keeping the camera steady.

Framed Or Unframed?
If your painting or photo is nicely framed, include the frame in your image. You do not want to cut off the edges of a nice frame any more than you would want to crop the edges of your painting. Unframed artwork can be shot with just a bit of space around the edges. One of the downsides to shooting a framed image is the glare from the glass covering the image. However, the following paragraph provides ways to photograph around this.

Shooting Through Glass
The first thing you need to do when shooting through glass is to turn off your flash. Then, watch out for reflections. When it comes to shooting your work, nothing is better than a painting without any protection on it. Glass can get in the way of a good photograph. If it is easy, you can remove the image from the frame. If not, it's not a big deal; there are ways around it. Again the best thing is to turn off the flash. With the flash on, you will need to place yourself at a 45 degree angle and this will cause your image to be crooked. Flash is not necessarily a bad thing, but it should only be used in certain circumstances. As an artist, you want the best representation possible for your work. In this case, using a flash against glass will cause alot of glare.

Another method to combat glare is to use a polarizing filter on your camera. Before rushing out to purchase one however, make sure your camera can use them. It's best to ask if you don't know. The only other thing you must to do to get a good photo of artwork behind glass is to watch out for reflections. Before you take the shot, take a moment and look everything over carefully. Then adjust yourself, your camera, or your painting until you get it right.

The tips in this section can also be used to photograph crafts and other 3 dimensional objects.

Reflections can also be a problem with many sculptures that have polished surfaces or pottery with a reflective glaze. These reflections are a little more difficult to remove from your photos because they do not all come from the same angle. To minimize these reflections as much as possible, you can try the following:

• First you will want to avoid using bright lights that are close to the work.Using natural light can help to eliminate many of the bright reflections.
• Consider using a backdrop, cluttered backgrounds distract potential buyers away from your work. You want them to focus on what you have created.
• Get close, fill the frame with the sculpture or piece of pottery so buyers will be able to see the details. Be sure your camera can maintain focus at a close distance. check your camera's manual to determine the minimum distance you can be from an object.

This is an example of a bad shot. The angle is far too low for the display box so the frame is keystoned (i.e.- the end nearer to the camera appears wider than the end further from the camera). To get rid of this effect, you must move the camera up to an angle that's parallel with the front of the display box. Also, the item was not lined up properly on the table so the horizon line formed by the table and wall appears slanted and is distracting as it runs through the item.

Here is a better photo taken under fluorescent lighting. The angle of this photograph is much better than the previous photo, but not yet perfect. There is also a bit of light reflecting off of the stone that causes it to appear hazy. One of the nice things in this photo is the elimination of the distracting background. A piece of black cloth was placed over the table and the display box was moved closer to the front of the table. This allowed for the removal of the distracting horizon line.

This photograph was taken under a simple light tent that you can make at home. The haziness of the stone was nearly eliminated by using the tent and the softer lighting causes the box to stand out. The key to taking a good image of your creation is to fill the frame with the artwork. This not only will cut down on distracting spots in the background, but it will help potential buyers to get a better look at your artwork and see the details that you've worked so hard to create.

Try to put yourself in the position of the buyer when you are taking your photos. How can you capture the most detail possible? What lighting looks best? Try to give the buyer as much information as possible about your work through your photos. It cannot be said enough that your images are likely to determine whether a potential buyer becomes an actual buyer or not.

For jewellery, reflections are once again a problem, but because jewellery is generally small you cannot simply move the light sources away from the item and still be able to clearly see the details. Another issue for jewellery photography is a distracting background. However, both of these problems are easily corrected.

A good way to avoid a distracting background is to lay the jewellery on a piece of cloth and then fill the frame with the item. If the camera you are using has a macro setting, use it, this will give you a high quality close up photo of your jewellery without distorting it.

To avoid reflections, you can take the item outside on an overcast day and shoot it. If that is not an option, you can easily set up a light tent with household items. The light tent allows for you to have non-directional lighting so that virtually no shadows are cast by the object you are shooting. It is created by having your object surrounded by a translucent material such as a white bedsheet or pillowcase which is then lit from the outside, typically using floodlights or desklamps with white, natural-looking light. Setting up a light tent is described in the next section, called Build Your Own Light Tent.

Here the background of the image is very complicated and it takes away from the jewellery, which is where the focus should be. Setting up a nice uniform background would be ideal for an object such as this. Also, we can see the reflection of the flash on each of the earrings and it washes out a bit of the detail. In a larger image, this can be very distracting. When photographing highly reflective surfaces it is important to be conscious of the reflections and try to avoid them at all times.

Here the light tent was used with the flash off. This works nicely because there is no bright reflection from the flash in the photo. Instead we can see nice clear detail of the pendant. The flash may be used sometimes when photographing jewellery, but it is usually an off-camera flash that is held out to the side so there is no reflection. The image was cropped and resized so the pendant fills much more of the frame. The use of the dark, uniform background provides a more professional look and gives a nice contrast so that the piece really stands out. With some patience, practice and a light tent, you too can create photos such as this.

To ensure your artwork stands out in the image, nomatter what it is, keep a simple background. Try to avoid any distractions such as lines that intersect your art, bright lights, or general background clutter. This, along with the tips shared above, should have you well on your way to creating images worthy of your art.

We have been talking at length throught this tutorial about the value of a simple light tent. It may seem difficult to set up but it is actually a very simple project and is a cost effective way to take better photographs of your jewellery, sculptures, or any other small, shiny objects. Below we have a photo of a very simple light tent setup.

First you will need some cloth such as a white bed sheet. In the photo below, a thin white fabric is used for the tent and a piece of burlap for the base. Different base fabrics will work better with certain items, so you have to experiment to see what works best for you. (Note: The tent must be white or very light colored or it will affect the color balance of your image).

The lights in the photo are 40W desk lamps and they work very well with the fabric doubled up.

To make the tent, a small free standing wire shelf like you would use to organize a closet was used. However, you can build the frame of the tent with whatever you have, let your imagination run wild.

The last step is to set up your tripod and experiment with the lighting until you find a setup that works for you. If you do not have a tripod, you should consider purchasing an inexpensive one or borrowing one to ensure the camera is steady when shooting; otherwise you may end up with blurry images.

Once everything is in place start taking better photographs of your artwork.

Note: The lights in the room were off while photographing the sculpture using the light tent. They are on in the photo to give a better view of the light tent setup.

simple light tent setup

Nomatter how good your image comes out, it is likely you will have to do some digital manipulation on the photo to get it just right. This may include things from sharpening the image, adjusting the colour balance, adjusting the brightness and contrast and adjusting the actual size of the photo. In order to do this you will need some image editing software. In our opinion, Adobe Photoshop is the best product out there for this sort of work. However, for most people, the capabilities of Photoshop go far beyond their needs....and the price, far beyond their budget.

So, with that in mind, here are a few products we found online that seem to provide all of the features you would need to edit your images so they are ready for the web. As with most free software, some of these products may require you to provide information to the company by registering. None of the products listed below are endorsed by Redquest Media or Nova Scotia Art Online, we simply put them here for your convenience.

• GIMP for Windows
  GIMP is a popular open-source image editor originally developed for UNIX/LINUX. It is often called "free Photoshop" since it has an interface and features similar to Adobe Photoshop. Since it is open source, it is maintained by volunteers so stability and update frequency could be an issue; however many users have reported using GIMP for Windows without any problems. It, as with many free editors, does not support GIF format. This is not usually an issue however since most of your images will be in JPEG format. For more information on GIMP, you can view their homepage here. To download a copy, go here.
• Serif Photo Plus
  For a long time, Serif has been giving away previous version of their software to entice users to buy the current version. You can currently download a completely free, fully-functional version of PhotoPlus 6, or order a CD and pay only shipping costs. To download PhotoPlus 6, go here.