Is photographing your own artwork a fit for your creative needs?

Perhaps some of this information will help you decide if photographing your own artwork fits how you operate as a creative professional.

Photographing your own artwork requires financial and time expenditure for training in digital photography and digital file management as well as financial expenditure in equipment. I personally feel learning to photograph and manage my own artwork digital files has been an asset in functioning as a professional artist. I’ve been doing so for 3 years

 I use a Nikon D90 which is moderately priced digital 12 megapixel camera. I purchased it for $900. I found a good used tripod at $150.

I had already been taking monthly lessons from a professional photographer and graphic artist learning applications of Adobe Creative Suite; Photoshop, Bridge, InDesign and Illustrator. She charges $100 for a 2 hour lesson. That has been a $5,000 expense over 4 years. I did this to learn how to create my own printed and web digital promotional material. When I purchased the D90 she began instructing me about how to photograph and manage my artwork as well as my photography references for my painting.  I first used CS3 as my graphic and digital photo management software. I purchased it at a student discount for $600 when I was taking a 3 credit, art marketing course at our local community college. My Children chipped in to purchase a student version of CS5 for me for Christmas.

I have also been able to utilize YouTube tutorials to learn the functions of my D90 and Adobe CS.

My choice of graphics software dictated my choice of computer and operating system software. I run Windows 7 Pro $150 on a multi drive gaming PC because you often need several applications of Adobe CS open at once. There is your largest financial expenditure. A multi drive gaming laptop with a decent will set you back $1,500 to $2,500. Because my husband and I run 2 businesses out of our home, investing in office equipment is a way of life. We couldn’t operate either business without it.

It’s been wonderful to be able to quickly shoot, download color correct and crop a digital image of my work in one to two hours. Oregon’s many overcast days offer perfect defused lighting for photographing artwork. I can get a well exposed digital image by shooting my work setup on a student easel in outside daylight that is not in direct sun.

The first 6 years I operated my art business, I delivered my work to professional photographer. There was considerable expense and turnaround time. I had to I had to wait until the work was fully dry, make visits back to check proof and was never really satisfied with the color of the images in comparison to the original. My photographer charged $350 per image to shoot and color correct my digital file

The tradeoff has been that my professional photographer could provide me with a large 300 to 400 MB file. The largest file I can get with my D90 is a 40MB file. Initially, I was selling Giclee’ reproductions of my original artwork as large as 24x30 inches which requires large digital files. For the price required to for me recuperate just my expense of the larger reproductions, attendees at art fairs were more interested in purchasing a small, affordable original piece of art if they were going to make an expenditure of that amount.

I’m told a good printing facility can overcome this limitation with computer software that can enlarge a smaller 40MB digital file to produce large Giclee’ reproductions. I have not tried this yet. I use my 40 MB files to print 5x7 note cards as well as 8x10 and 11x14 Giclee’ reproductions on my Epson 2200 which we purchased for $1,000 about 8 years ago. It still produces excellent Giclee reproductions after 8 years of heavy operating.