Photographing Paintings

[tomdi]

Hello everybody.

A friend of mine asked me to take pictures of his paintings. They're mostly black background with very colorfull details. The pictures are for a website later on.

What would be the best approach to photograph them? I made some test shots and it seems really difficult to get the colors rigth even though the exposure is ok. I seem to also have problems with the lightning. :oops:

Any advice would be greatly apreciated.

Cheers,
Tom

[rcheliflyer]

While looking for info on taking pictures of pictures,
I found this site to have good basic info on photographing flat art images.

http://www.rickleephoto.com/rlartcopying.htm

[tomdi]

excellent, .. thanks a lot. I will try that.

Actually I nearly have a setup like that. Only minor changes to be made.

Cheers,
Tom

[tim]

I recently had to do this. I used a studio strobe with a big soft box at about 45 degrees to it, maybe a bit further around from the camera. Reflector on the right as fill. Polarizer on my lens. It worked really well.

[Titus213]

You don't say what type of artwork. Best shoot it out of the frame if possible. I've just started doing this for my wife's site (http://www.thenorwoodstudio.com/). I generally try shooting in available light, use a tripod and take longer exposures as necessary. The last one I did I set up in the garage, back to the door, garage door raised just a bit to allow some light in. I didn't even need a tripod for that one.

[henry_b]

i did this kind of shots a long time ago for a painter, the setup was preety the same as in the link that rcheliflyer provide, this painter needed the color exactly as they wer in real life, to achieve a perfect color i made the shot with something similar to a mcbeth color checker right below the picture, that way i just could check the checker and be sure the colors were correct, for some shots (with glass on the frame) i put a big velvet cloth between the painting and the camera then make a hole in the cloth and shoot though the hole to avoid any reflection, for other shots with textured paintings you have to play with the ratios between your lights to produce some shadows so you can see the textures of the paint, otherwise the paintings will look flat

[UncleDoug]

All the methods suggested here will work well.
But as with everything you can make this as much of a science project as you want.

Here is a down and dirty way:
If you have an over-cast sky shoot the piece outdoors.
You'd be amazed at the results you can get from natures soft-box.
Good even lighting(key!!!) and due to the softness of the light very little to no specular highlights(another key!!!).

I can elaborate on how we do it in our studio if you want....

[tomdi]

thanks a lot for all the replies.

I've tried as it is described on Rick Lee's website. The results are ok to me. I've send two samples to the artist and I am waiting for the feedback.

It's been raining for days here, so shooting outside was a nogo.

He's got a website: www.politain.com
"Funny" website, .. click on the left "hand" to enter the gallery.

The pictures that are there were taken by a studio photographer. Except for the last one. (called "no milk today") I shot that one outside last month.

Cheers,
Tom

[gardenstate]

When I take photos of pictures, I use the following procedure...

Shoot with a flash at an angle to the picture to avoid glare
or ..Do not use the flash if there is enough ambient light and you have a tripod to take a longer exposure.

Use the easy-to-use perspective correction filter in Paint Shop Pro (Version 9-11 have it)

I have used this method on many many images and it works great!