Six Tips for Photographing Work for Your Art School Portfolio

Written By Stephanie Broder

When putting together your art school portfolio, you must showcase your best work in the best way possible. You never want the reason you got rejected to be unclear or sloppy photographs of your work!

And now that almost everyone has a smartphone with a great camera in their pocket, there are fewer excuses than ever to have bad photography in your portfolio. If you are a digital artist or photographer - lucky you! You’re already one step ahead. However, since most portfolios request a range of materials, you will probably need to photograph something for your portfolio.

Here are my six top tips for photographing work for your portfolio:

  1. If It’s Small and Flat, Consider Scanning It

For work that fits inside, using a decent-quality scanner is an excellent replacement for photography. It eliminates the need to light and stage your work. You still may need to make some digital adjustments (more on that later), but getting a high-quality digital image of your work can be easy. Check your local library or school if you don’t own a scanner!

2. Lighting is Key

The lighting is probably the most important determinant of a good photo. The perfect lighting is a bright, cloudy day outside. If that happens while you’re preparing your portfolio, hurry on out there and take some photos!

But if you are stuck with interior lighting, there are some things to watch out for. First - hang your work on a wall, if possible. You’ll get better lighting from overhead if the work isn’t parallel to the light. Next, ensure you don’t have any bright spots from the lighting. If you do - you may need additional lighting sources. Bright spots tend to result in overexposure in one part of the image and shadows in the others. While you can fix this digitally, it’s usually not worth the hassle.

3. If the Art is 3D, Take Multiple Shots

You won’t know if you can include multiple angles of a 3D work in your portfolio until you get access to your school’s particular application website. However, taking multiple angles of a 3D work is still good practice. You may presume that a certain angle provides the viewers with the most precise understanding of the work, but once you’ve shot a wider range of angles, realize there was a much better one you weren’t even considering!

4. Make a Simple Photo Studio

For 3D work, you can also make a really simple photo studio at home with a large piece of white, grey or other neutral-toned paper. Tape the paper to the wall so half is on the wall and half on the floor. The key is - don’t crease the paper where the wall meets the floor! Instead, let it roll gently. This helps eliminate shadows in the background and keeps the focus on the work. You can also do this on a table or other surface next to the wall if the lighting is better.

These images show my easy photo studio set-up. Here, I’m taking advantage of the natural light on my windowsill. I have a curl of tape on the window frame and one on the sill, holding the paper in place. Notice in the close-up that it appears the model is floating in white space, not sitting on a windowsill! Neat!

(PS. The “sculpture” for this example is not my art. I got this cute little mini calligraphy desk from a gacha machine in Tokyo)

5. Consider Some Basic Digital Edits

There’s nothing wrong with sprucing up your photographs digitally. The most important thing is that you should not revise the artwork itself. Instead, you should optimize the photograph to showcase the artwork in the best way possible.

Most photo editing programs, including Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, allow basic edits like contrast, brightness and levels. I always recommend starting with those three basic adjustments and going from there. Contrast lets you adjust the range between the darkest and highest values in the image. Brightness adjusts the overall lightness or darkness of the image. But levels are the ones I think make the most easy, striking improvements. You can brighten the brights and darken the darks in levels, making the image more true to life.

If you need help learning these essential photo editing tools, feel free to contact me for art coaching, where we can work directly with your images. But you can also find tons of great resources online by searching for your favourite photo editing software tutorials.

In Adobe Lightroom CC, you can access all the basic tools you need in the Edit “Light” menu on the right hand side

In Adobe Photoshop CC, you can access all the tools you need by changing your workspace to “Photography” and accessing the Adjustments tab. Or, go into the Image menu at the top.

6. Don’t Be Fancy

Your art school portfolio is not your Instagram feed or a bougie blog. You don’t need to find an artsy background. You definitely should not add filters to the photograph. You shouldn’t take the picture at a jaunty angle.

Just remember that photography, in this case, is just the vehicle through which you are presenting your artwork to the reviewers. You want them to feel like they are in the room looking at the artwork. Don’t do anything to distract them from that and you’ll be fine!

Stephanie Broder
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