Photographing Your Art for Online Display

When you are submitting your art for judging online, you need to keep a few things in mind. You need a very good quality photograph to show it to best advantage. Hiring a professional photographer for the job is ideal, but frequently expensive. You can do the photography yourself if you are careful.

The first thing to consider is your lighting. Whether you photograph your work inside or outside, for instance, makes a tremendous difference in how your colors look. This is the only version of your art the judge will see, and you want it to be as accurate as possible. Look at the photos below.

Each of the above photographs is of the same painting, taken indoors, in different rooms, under different lighting conditions.

The two photographs below were each taken outdoors, one in shade and one in diffuse sunlight.

You need to be the judge of which photography method best represents the true color of your art. The widely recommended situation is to take your artwork outside in midday (no early morning, late evening light effects), but not in direct sunlight. Make sure there are no shadows or glare effects from the sun.

Also notice that in some photos the bottom of the picture looks smaller or larger than the top. A photograph like this will be difficult to crop down to the image alone without cutting off some of the picture, which could change the way the judge perceives your composition. Always try to position you artwork as near to perpendicular to the ground as possible, and crop out any unnecessary background image.

To eliminate minor problems of this sort you may wish to use one of two features on your iPhone. The first involves going to “Edit” on your Photos screen, then clicking on the “Crop and Straighten” command. There should be three different “Straighten” icons at the bottom. Manipulating these can correct for minor flaws in the position of the image. Concentrate on the work alone. You may include the frame if you wish, or crop it out.

To scan your art using the “Notes” app on your phone, go to these instructions:

Your image size should be no larger than 5 MB. If you hover your cursor over the file of your image it should tell you how many MB or KB of memory it uses.