Tips and advice

How to take a photo of your work

To submit your artwork, your photos should show your work off to its best advantage and give a good representation of how it looks in the flesh, so that we can make a well-informed judgement during the selection process.

Here are some tips for taking photos of your work that will help you get a good image:

  • Try to use an even natural light, if possible – a good idea is to take pictures outside on a cloudy day. Avoid taking photos in direct sunlight or in rooms with strip lights or low-energy bulbs.
  • If your work is framed under glass, take it out of the frame. This will reduce reflections in the picture.
  • Avoid using a flash if your work is at all shiny - for example, acrylic or oil paint will reflect the flash back into your photo.
  • Putting your camera on a fixed surface such as a table or tripod can help make the picture sharper.

Another good tip is to take lots of photos of each, you can then pick the best shot to submit.

Why not visit this external site for more helpful tips?

Editing your photos once you've taken them

Once you've taken the photos of your artwork, download them onto your computer, after which you can edit the photos to make them look more like the original artwork.

For example you might want to:

  • Crop the picture to get rid of unnecessary background
  • Adjust the colours to match the original
  • Stretch the photo to make the proportions match the original

To do this use photo-editing software, this can be found online and is often free to use.

A couple of examples are:

Picassa - a photo album and editing application from Google

Picnik - an online photo editor.  No registration needed.

Other options can be found by searching for “photo editors” on the internet.