Photographing your work

How to get high-quality photography that best represents your work

Image courtesy Jane Sedgwick ‘Token Earrings’. Photo Zuza Grubecka

It is essential to have high quality images of your work to be competitive in your applications whether to fairs, galleries, open competitions, grant applications or awards. Crafts Council UK shares their top tips below for photographing your work.

You need to also consider the various ways in which your work is communicated visually. This can be how a single item sits within a themed collection; a product image suitable for selling online; images for marketing purposes which tells a story beyond the finished product from inspiration and processes of making to how it may look within an interior of a home or worn on the body.

• 50% of all good photography is editing
• Relying on smartphone or digital tablet for your photography can limit the quality
• It is worth investing in commissioning a professional photographer for a selection of your work
• If you feel confident in taking photographs yourself, it is worth taking the time to experiment with a set up that suits your work and the outcomes you need
• It is not always possible to photograph a commission when it is in situ, be mindful of this, you need to provide evidence of your portfolio, factor in time to document and photograph your finished work before delivery
• Make sure all your images have the correct image captions for any submissions (to fairs, media, galleries, competitions, awards, for clients). For example, ‘title, size in cm, medium, by xxx, image credit’
• Photographing shiny reflective surfaces such as metalwork – use as much light as possible but diffuse the light. For smaller items it is worth placing work in a soft box
• Photographing matt surfaces – use spotlights to enhance the colour
• Photographing large-scale work – factor into your budget the photography of a large piece, especially for commissioned work

Enhance your brand

Don’t just stick to product photography, enhance your brand (storytelling) with:

• Profile image – professional studio shot of you and an image of you making work
• Lifestyle image – your work in an environment or space that helps tell your story
• Commercial enhancing – your work in an environment that helps your target customer visualise the work in a specific setting
• Making images – audiences like to know more about the making and the maker behind the making
• Detail images – close up images of your work enhances the skill, materials and techniques behind your practice

Top tips from Anne Purkiss, collection and portrait photographer

• If possible, use manual settings and search online for tutorials e.g. YouTube
• Always shoot at the largest file size, ideally in RAW format, you can downsize later, but you cannot increase the file size (add information that hasn’t been recorded initially)
• Give yourself as much light as possible, this allows for a small aperture which gives greater depth of field (alternative: focus stacking)
• Try to use daylight calibrated lamps (c. 5000K), flashlights are usually calibrated as ‘daylight’
• Control the light sources not only by changing the direction of the lights but also by varying the light output
• Use reflectors or reflective surfaces to lighten shadows
• Try also to light the surface or background of the object from behind
• Reduce highlights and ‘bleached out’ areas by diffusing light with soft boxes or diffusers in front of the lamps, or by ‘bouncing’ light off white surfaces
• Try also to use black cards or paper to reduce reflections
• You can reduce reflections by using a polarisation filter

Recommended list of tools for a basic set up

• Tripod
• Lights (daylight temperature c.5000K)
• Diffuser (soft box)
• Reflector (reflective silver surface)
• White paper (background and for ‘bouncing’ light)
• Black paper (for reducing reflections)
• Colour card (greycard)
• Polarisation filter
• Sticky tape, masking tape, scissors, Bostik Blu Tack, gloves for handling polished items

Resources

• Photoshop tutorials and free adobe tutorials
• Photopea – free online photo editor.
• Unsplash – free downloadable stock photos
• 9 top tips to photograph crafts and jewellery from The Design Trust
• Social media image size guide on Sprout Social