Here are some tips on how to take a great picture of your child’s artwork. The biggest stumbling block in taking good pictures, in my opinion, is lighting.
Take this artwork pic:
I put the artwork on a table, pulled out my cell phone and snapped a pic. Seems simple enough but if you have overhead lighting, shadows are going to get in the way. You can see the outline of my arm and cell phone in this picture. Now take that same piece of artwork and drop it on the ground, stand over it and take a picture.
What a difference! Standing over it, eliminates the shadows and gives you a top view. You can zoom in with your cell phone and take a pretty decent picture.
When I take pictures of jewellery for my museum store clients, I will use a small folding light box to eliminate any reflections. For lighting, I don’t use any fancy lights. In fact, I don’t use lights at all. I take all my photography on cloudy days. That’s right - the best lighting is a cloudy day. You may wonder, how do you take pictures in the middle of winter?
Well, this picture that you see here was taken on a table by a big window in the winter. In the spring, summer and fall, I’ll take the light box outside and do the photography there. In winter, I rely on taking pictures by a window. Stay tuned for a more in-depth jewelry photography blog in the months to come.
Back to artwork photography - if your artwork has an odd shaped border, then I recommend taking it against a plain backdrop - on a table or piece of fabric, like a couch - anything that’s plain without too many patterns. At our end, we will cut out the artwork and work from it that way. In fact, for any images that you send us, we can Photoshop them to remove shadows or fix the perspective. Whenever we receive a picture of artwork, we send you a proof with a few options, for your approval, before we make your custom piece. If we think we need to make any adjustments to the picture, we will give you that option - showing you a ‘before and after’ and letting you decide. It’s all part of our process!