Photographing Artwork - input on ideas requested

[Scott Pruett]

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I have documented about a twenty some artists in the last 4 years.
I used a sliding scale as how to charge them, succesful artists on the expensive end and the not so succesful at the cheap end.
Usually they needed their work documented for an upcoming exhibition. They would use the photos for their invites as well as having them on their own websites. If an exhibition went well for them I would know to charge them a little more next time.
Artists can really promote their work much better with good photographs, and when they see the effect of that, they will also value your services more.

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Thanks Marc, that's encouraging to hear.

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As for as color management, shoot in raw and always include a regognised color chart. Let the designer of the publication worry about how to fix the file according to the color chart. And if you want to put them on your website let the artist color proof them.

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Good call on the color chart. I don't know why I haven't thought of that before in regards to letting designers/printers fix things that way.

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As for as lighting gear, two umbrellas are more then enough for work up to 6x 6 feet as long as you can place them about 10 feet away from the large artwork, closer for smaller. For highly reflective art work use a polarizing filter on your lights as well as your camera.


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Umbrellas will probably be fine, yeah. I've used softboxes to the sides in the past b/c I shot pieces under glass. This worked great for me. If there's a need to shoot on-location vs. in the studio, of course umbrellas would be more convenient.

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Apart from making quiet a bit of money from it I really liked to hang out whith those artist at their studio.

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Can I ask what "quite a bit of money" (ballpark) is for ~20 artists in your experience? Did you typically go to them vs. them coming to you?

cheers,
Scott

[marc_gerritsen]

Artist with small budgets and small artworks would come to me
Arist with large budgets make usually large artworks so it is easier to take my gear to them then them taking their artwork to me.
To crack the market you have to first bend over backwards, so start to charge a normal hourly rate of what a good plumber would charge, once you know what you are doing you keep on increasing your client base and your hourly rate.
Also tell the artist that you know they are not rich and that you want to "grow" with them. If you start to give a good reliable service they will start to depend on you and you can increase the price. Your main selling point is to tell them that they can sell and promote their work much better with good photographs, but get the work first and worry about the money later.

[Scott Pruett]

Thanks for the advice Marc... much appreciated.

[JeffRogers]

I own a lot of nice artwork where I have shot their artwork in exchange for their work. Also, I have a personal connection with each piece of art at my home.

[Asher_Kelman]

If you use a color chart, do you include a table of aRGB or SRGB values for each color?

Asher [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MarkTDavidson]

Asher's point is a good one.

I have many times given a disk to an artist only to call me with a complaint that the color/ density is off. I do supply the files in sRGB only unless the client requests ARGB. However, I find that a startling number of artists have no computer at all or borrow a friend's laptop to view the files.

I even had someone complaining that when they popped it onto the kiosk at WalMart the colors looked poor.

I always include a printed proof with the file along with a sheet that explains the importance of printing the file through a professional service that utilizes calibrated equipment. Again, many assume that Wal Mart is that service.

[AlecThigpen]

I shoot quite a bit of art with digital. The clients are all very satisfied with the results. I shoot with soft reflectors using electronic flash, sometimes two lights to a side for large works. I use the edge light rather than the center, and keep the lights lower than 45 degrees for many reasons. I shoot with long lenses for some of the same reasons, one of those being to reduce glare or flare on the sides and I keep the lights at least three times the distance from the artwork to the total width of the art. When possible I shoot the work before the application of the gloss coat. Occasionally I will use polarization, but that tends to increase contrast to higher than offset printing levels and lowering contrast in the computer is not as good as getting it right from the initial lighting setup.

I always color balance to a grey card and keep the contrast to useable printing levels of 4 stops. I have had very good results with the Kodak 14nx, and even better with the Canon 1DS Mk II. Very good color accuracy over the entire range of colors. Much better than Chromes.