Photographing artwork is an art; professionals use specialized equipment and experience to get great photos. If you plan to photograph your artwork yourself, here are some tips to help you get good results.

Photocopying Small Works: This is an easy way to get good-quality images without distortion.

Lighting: The Colour in your artwork will look different depending on the lights you use. Sunlight gives the most natural colours, so some artists photograph their work outdoors on a sunny day. You can also purchase ‘daylight’ bulbs relatively inexpensively (look for bulbs with a colour temperature of 5000 Kelvin). You can also buy inexpensive reflective fixtures made of aluminum at hardware stores. The biggest problem is that they dent easily, and dents make noticeable bright spots and shadows in your photographs.

Lighting: Uniformity can often be achieved by ‘eyeballing’ the image before you take the picture. You could also use a light meter to measure the light intensity at the four corners and centre of the artwork and adjust the lights until all readings are the same. Two light sources – one on either side and equidistant from the work – are a good basic setup.

Lighting: Reflections can be difficult to avoid with some glossy media, or if the piece is in a glass frame. Photographing the work unframed is an obvious way to avoid the latter problem, and you can move your lights around to lessen glossy-media reflections.

Physical setup: Keystoning is the perspective distortion that occurs when the camera is not centred properly before photographing the work. If the camera is too high, the top of the picture will look wider than it is. If it’s too low, the bottom will look wider. The same applies if the camera is too far to the left or right – the side closer to the camera will look too wide.

To avoid this effect, line up the camera lens’s centre with the artwork’s centre, both horizontally and vertically. Hang the picture flat on a wall and put the camera on a tripod. Use a tape measure to ensure that the centre of the lens is at the same height as the centre of the picture. Then, look through the viewfinder to check that the left and right sides of the image look the same length. If they don’t look the same, move the camera left or right until they do. Some cameras display a grid in the viewfinder, and you can use the grid to help align the camera correctly.

NAC reserves the right to remove any artwork from adjudication that may contravene copyright laws or show standards or which violates these guidelines. Artwork derived from another artist’s work is not permissible unless considered “transformative” – demonstrating a significant creative departure from the original (i.e., new expression, meaning or message). All artists should familiarize themselves with copyright laws and derivative and transformative art concepts. NAC respects the cultural rights of Indigenous peoples and requests that artists’ work be culturally appropriate. NAC will not accept work deemed to be below gallery standards or the subject matter is too sensitive for the online exhibition.