My lack of posts lately means only one thing; I’m busy. Its a pretty typical statement on photography blogs though, so I apologize for being like everyone else. But let’s face it, being busy is a good thing (most of the time).
I recently completed a project in which I got to photograph the artwork of Marissa Grondin. She is an incredibly talented mixed media artist working out of Calgary whose work I absolutely love. I’m typically photographing people, so to photograph her artwork was a fun and welcomed challenge. And of course, one artist helping another is always a bonus.
Photographing Marissa’s work wasn’t an easy task though, because her work was not all 2-dimensional. She uses a variety of media to bring her work to life and off the canvas, so with that came the challenge of many reflections and shadows. I used two Elinchrom BX500Ri heads on either side for my starting point. Then I adjusted the lights back and forth towards the plane of the artwork until the piece was evenly lit on both sides with zero glare. For many pieces, the resulting highlights and shadows were acceptable and didn’t need to be completely eliminated, since the artwork was 3D and I wanted to ensure that my 2D photographs interpreted what the actual piece looked like.
The overall key to photographing art? Reduce the angle in which the light is reflecting off it’s surface. If you’re getting glare on your artwork, it means the angle in which the light is entering the lens is the same angle that the source light is hitting the artwork. Just like I mentioned above, the solution is to move your light source(s) closer to the plane of the artwork. I should also mention that the room I was shooting in was completely black with no ambient light, as I needed to ensure there were zero reflections.
A couple of helpful resources that I utilized before shooting were an article by Matt Greer titled How To Photograph Artwork and a video by Tyler Stalman.
And lastly, I couldn’t write about Marissa without plugging her work. Go check out Marissa Grondin on Society6 where you can purchase prints and other merchandise.
http://society6.com/MGrondinArt
Thank you Ian. Your talent and expertise were a necessity to the creation of my website and portfolio. Without you I would not have the drive to put these things together. Thank you for helping me show my artwork to the world!
Much love friend.
