Taking great photos of your watercolours

Whether you want to share your photos of your paintings online (e.g., FaceBook or Art Tutor gallery) or simply want to keep a record of a painting before you sell it or give it away, it is important to know how to take a decent photograph of your paintings. Any good camera digital point and shoot or SLR will work

 

The main advantage of a digital camera is that you can review the effect of your shot, the focus, the exposure, and any glare issues immediately while you’re shooting, or shortly after, rather than waiting days for pictures to develop only to find out something went wrong. In addition, you have the ability to work on your photos afterwards in software such as Photoshop to make edits.

 

Traits you are looking for in a good photograph include: 

• Proper exposure 
• Colour balance (important when using artificial light) 
• Appropriate cropping 
• Straightened the photo 
• Sharpened of the image 
• Void of any reflections

 Lens

 

If you are using a zoom lens, you should check out the numbers on the lens to make sure you are zoomed to around 50mm or above. If you us as smaller number, say 35mm, then such a wide-angle will distort your painting outward and you’ll see the straight edges of the frame or painting curve and bulge toward the edges, distorting the finished photo of your painting.

 

Linear Polarizers

 

You might want to use a linear polarising filter over the lens. This device selectively allows the passage of only certain orientations of plane polarized light. Why is it useful? Well, most light sources put out randomly polarized light, i.e. an equal mixture of every kind of polarization. Also, polarizers can also increase the saturation of colors by eliminating some of the light reflected.

Do not use a circular polarising filter, even though they are more common these days (because they work better with autofocus). They will leave large portions of your painting full of glare. I find the autofocus usually still works fine with them, but if not, just manually focus.

 

The lighting

 

Most of us do not have 500-watt tungsten (3200K) lights which many professionals use. The basic principle is to have an even light.

 

Natural indirect lighting is the best option, however, do not take photo in full sun.

 

A room with windows can offer indirect sunlight, even on an overcast day. You do, however, want to avoid sunlight striking your object directly, as this will cause glare.

 

In the absence of natural light or inclement weather, we can use two single lamps and use them to light the painting from both sides to avoid any “hot spots”. Not that the polarising filters cut down a significant amount of the light reaching the camera sensor as well, which is another reason to have a good, strong light.

 

Avoid the use of a flash aimed directly at the piece. 99 times out of 100 this is your enemy.

  

Set your camera

 

You might want to select the manual mode for setting your exposure and shoot at about a five-second exposure with a focal length of around f/10, which gives me a little extra focus depth to make up for any error in focusing.

 

Always use the lowest ISO setting on your camera (usually ISO 100), since this will also give you the sharpest picture possible – the ISO setting traditionally refers to the sensitivity of film and in digital cameras it also refers to the sensitivity of your image sensor; the higher the ISO number, the grainier the image will appear.

 

Remember to use the white balance setting on your camera.

 

Take your picture

 

Simply look through your viewfinder and rotate the polarising filter on the front of the camera lens until you see the painting darken slightly and the glare magically vanish!

 

If you are having difficulty seeing exactly when the glare disappears, move the camera closer to the painting to adjust the lens filter. Once the filter is adjusted properly, you won’t have to change this setting when you move back or shoot additional paintings.

 

When taking the picture, I use the camera’s timer set at two seconds so I can press the shutter, remove my hand, and then wait for it to start the exposure. This means I don’t have to worry about my hand jostling the camera and creating a blurry image.

 

Composing the shot (the most important)

 

Make sure your camera is at a right angle to the piece being photographed. It’s probably best that you lay your painting flat on the floor and shoot from above looking down (use a chair or step-ladder to obtain ample distance if it's really large). You do not want to distort the view.

 

You also want to ensure the photo is square and properly cropped.

 

Have a great week and look forward to seeing great photos in the gallery

Danielle