Business is growing and had 3 shoots for the weekend.  This first one was to create images of 3 pieces of artwork by Charmaine.  Charmaine is a co-worker at the day job and  I feel she has some raw talent and needs to keep up the work.  I only wish I could draw this well and have the patience it requires to do these drawings.

Before I get to the technique of photographing artwork I’ll show you her drawings.

Shading with crayon

Pencil drawing of a Tarantula.

Charcoal sketch.

Technical Ramblings:  For photographing artwork I’m sure I could do it easier if I would spend the time to create a stand to hold the artwork.  However, I don’t do this type of work often and haven’t seen a need to spend the time as of yet.  I improvised this weekend and used blue painters tape to hold the artwork to the cardboard backer that was in turn clamped to the backdrop stand.  Two AlienBee B800s in large soft boxes were placed on either side of the artwork to feather the light on the piece.  This eliminates any glare and allows the texture of the paper to be shown in the photo.  I also used the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport to create a custom Adobe Lightroom camera profile for this lighting setup.  This allowed more accurate color matching to what you see in the actual drawing to what shows up in the final image.

Artwork is leveled and balanced vertically and horizontally between the strobes.

Another view from above to show how the strobes feather the light onto the artwork.

A third view to give some context to the positioning of the strobes and tripod.

–
Mark Mortensen
Lakewood Colorado portrait and event photographer.
www.MarkMortensen.com