Make sure your photography helps you get selected for an art exhibition!

One of the things the Royal Academy of Arts does extremely well is to provide model instructions on "how to" for its call for entries for the Summer Exhibition (see yesterday's blog post Call for Entries: The RA Summer Exhibition 2026)

One aspect of that relates to the information they now provide for all those who MUST present a digital image of their artwork - which is 

• how an artwork is judged in the first round
• how it appears for sale on the online exhibition on the RA website

If you aspire to being one of those 4,000 artworks which makes it through the first screen sift of digital images then:

• as well as producing a good artwork
• you also MUST produce a good digital image of it!

So this is by way of a reminder of what people need to know.

Various art societies having open exhibitions would do well to take a look!

How to Photograph your Work - by the Royal Academy of Arts 

See How to Photograph Your Work - from the RA website

There is also a video to view - AFTER you have registered on the RA website to submit an artwork.

Key Points included are highlighted below. I've reworded some to make them clearer! 

Plus reordered them into what's really important to know first!

You can also consult relevant pages in the Image Management for Artists section of my Art Business Info for Artists website

• How to photograph art - for Artists - this provides a lot more practical detail and tips than found in this blog post
• How to scan artwork to create a digital image of your art

What you are aiming to produce

Digitising your art for posterity

When I was still making art, I used to be absolutely fastidious about recording its creation digitally - as it progressed and then again at the end and then saving it in different file formats. 

As I got more experienced, I started looking more into the "how to get a good image" and "how to photograph your art"

I was rather overwhelmed by the fact that, back in the 1990s, the first time I engaged a photographer to photograph my art, I ended up in her studio with black cloth everywhere, the lights off and her hand holding one of those clicker things which takes the picture. They were jolly good images! Pity we weren't doing digital then....

Many artists are now very interested in making sure they get good quality images of their artwork either through digital scanning or via digital photography - primarily so they can reproduce their art in different ways for ancillary sales.

Subsequently, I got very interested in collecting information about how to photograph your own art and everything I found at the time ended up on this page How to Photograph Art - for Artists on my Art Business Info for Artists website.   

Which is how I ended up with Case Studies like this......

Many thanks toYanny Petters for the action shot of her husband 
photographing her art outside on a bright but overcast day with no shadows

I'm now a member of the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society. The Society is currently involved in digitising its archive of botanical illustrations of the plants growing in the Chelsea Physic Garden.

This is the latest post on the CPGFS Instagram Account of the activities of the British Museum imaging department who have been engaged to digitise the @cpgflorilegiumsociety Archive Collection.  

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society (@cpgflorilegiumsociety)

How to photograph art

This is about a page for artists which tells you how to photograph your art - on my Art Business Information for Artists website

Its target audience is artists who want to prepare images of their art for:

• their website and social media - to promote their art
• to enter open exhibitions and art competitions
• for exhibition catalogues and other publications
• for presentations and online teaching.
  

I wish I'd completed it a long time ago - but it's finally been published and I'm sure it will continue to be improved over time.

Digital image files are now the standard way images are recorded.
It's ESSENTIAL that artists need to know how to capture a digital file - via photography or scanning,
how to process a digital file and the best ways to backup your inventory of images of your art.

How to photograph your art

How to photograph your art - for artists

You can find it as follows 

• Go to Art Business Info. for Artists
  
• Go to PRACTICE
  
• then Image Management for Artists 
• then Photography of Art for Artists

 

Image Management for Artists

Photography of Art for Artists

On this page about you can find:

• Introduction to how to photograph your art
• BASICS for photographing art
• Image Selection and Preparation
• Guidelines and videos about how to photograph art
• How to photograph behind glass
• ​Checking digital accuracy and correcting colour
• Guidelines on photographing art for major art competitions
• ​Digital File Formats and Image Resolution
• Introduction to professional photography
• Glossary: Digital File Terminology
• Photographing artists - for marketing purposes (to follow)

How to scan art and back up image files

On two other pages in the Image Management section, you can also learn about

• How to scan artwork This section looks at:
• Why scanning is the best alternative to photography
• Different types of scanner 
• DIY: how to scan artwork
• Professional digital imaging services
• Glossary of scanning terminology
• How to backup image files - how to create and store archives of your images