How to photograph artwork

Discover the best way to light and shoot paintings, artwork and old prints at home

- James Paterson

Whether you want to capture a painting, digitise old prints or take on a copy work job, photographing artwork is a useful skill. But there’s more to it than pointing your camera at the canvas. Here we’ll look at a host of camera skills that you can use to hone your technique, from lighting and shooting set-ups to cross-polarisation and more.

What kit do I need?

Camera - A DSLR or mirrorless camera that lets you set manual exposure. Lens - A 50mm prime or longer lens is the best option. We used a 105mm lens. Lights - Two speedlights or strobes are ideal, or strong LEDs, plus two stands and white umbrellas or softboxes. Tripod - A tripod that lets you swivel the centre column to a horizontal position is helpful to use, as it allows you to shoot downwards without including the tripod legs in the frame. Tape measure - Useful for matching the height of the painting with the camera. Circular Polarising Filter and Polarising sheets - To cut out glare completely by using the cross-polarisation technique.

A simple lighting set-up at home

Sound lighting is the key ingredient to successful artwork photography. As such we need to control the power, spread and direction of the light so that we can capture paintings and prints evenly, with no glare or reflections. This requires off-camera, manoeuvrable light sources, either flashes or LEDs. Two lights are ideal as we can light the artwork evenly from either side.