The Basics of Photographing Installed Art

here are times when artists want to photograph installed art. For example, your work is going to be exhibited in a show at a prestigious gallery or museum. Or perhaps you’ve just sold one of your big pieces to a local nabob who has it displayed in the grand foyer of his McMansion.

These are great moments in your career and you need to record how your work looks in these settings. These images can be useful for getting you more sales in the future.

Photographing installed art is also important if you are an artist whose work will hang on a wall. Most of the time, artists photograph this art against a blank background. But these images tend to lack a sense of scale or utility.

Photographing on location

The situations I’m talking about fall under the rubric of “location” photography. When it comes to photography on location, you have to deal with many more variables than you encounter in a nice, orderly studio setting. These include:

• Typically a combination of two or more of the three types of lighting — daylight, tungsten lighting and fluorescent.
• Working inside a gallery or a living room where there is little space for a tripod and lights.
• Photographing in a very large space where there is little available light.
• A lack of space making it very hard to isolate your work from other art or furniture, etc.
• Civilians in a public space who walk right into a shot just as the shutter clicks.

If I have to photograph installed art, the first thing I do is go to the location to get a feeling for the problems I’ll face. Whether it’s a home or a gallery, ask yourself a number of questions.

• How many different types of light illuminate the work?
• Is the work near a window? Is it spot-lit?
• Do overhead fluorescents and halogen spots light it?
• Is there a lot of room?
• How far can you get from the work? Are there architectural elements or furniture blocking a clear shot of the work?
• Is there power for a big, portable, studio strobe?

A wide-angle lens was used to show the large space in this photo of a glass installation by Dale Chilhuly at the old Union Station in Tacoma, Wash. Photos by Steve Meltzer

Daylight is simple to handle

Once you’ve evaluated the location, you can plan the way to shoot the art. I always start with the lighting. If the work is mostly lit by daylight, things are easy. This is your basic point-and-shoot situation. I’d recommend that you place your camera on a tripod and use an aperture like f/11 or f/16 to insure a good deep field of sharpness. Use the camera’s meter to determine the exposure for the scene.

Sometimes I use a small hand-held flash to soften the shadows in a scene. To do this I set the camera at its “sync” speed (usually a 1/60th of a second) or slower and set the flash to one stop less than the camera setting. For example, if the meter calls for an exposure of f/11 at 1/60th of a second, set the flash to f/8. Supplementing the existing light with a small flash is a simple trick to get really great images.

Gallery lights present a different problem

Many galleries illuminate art with small halogen spotlights that help to focus one’s attention on the works. But you’ll discover that the center of the spot is much brighter than its outer part. Often either the center of the work will be washed out, the outer edges too dark, or both.

In this situation I use a small flash to smooth out the spotlight. I start by getting an exposure for the center of the spot by taking a reading of the light with my camera pretty close to the art. I set my camera to this reading and then set my flash for one stop more.

So, if the camera reads f/5.6 at 1/30 second, I set the flash to f/8. This will produce a photo that will show the art correctly lit and exposed, yet with enough of a hint of the spotlight to look right.

In this photo of another Dale Chihuly piece at the old Union Station in Tacoma, Wash., the image benefits from using a telephoto lens to eliminate distracting elements. Also, in this scene, people were included since they helped add an element of scale to the image.

Fluorescent lights need a filter

For situations in which the dominant light is fluorescent, I have a magenta colored filter (marked FL-D and called a “daylight fluorescent” filter) that screws into my camera lens and corrects the color of the lights. If I’m shooting digital I’ll check my white balance and make sure that it has corrected for the fluorescents.

Wide-angle lens work in large or small spaces

To deal with the problems of space, I have a wide variety of lenses for my cameras. I use a very wide-angle lens — that is a lens usually shorter than 35mm, like a 28, 24 or 20mm in focal length — when I am in a tight space. It lets me see a whole artwork even when I am relatively close to the work.

But I have to be careful of the vertical lines in a scene when I shoot with a wide-angle lens. If I don’t hold the camera parallel to the walls, they will appear to be falling over on the work.

A wide-angle lens will let me see the whole object and some of the space around it. I try to include the corner or edge of some furniture or a window as a scale element. This helps the viewer see how big the work is.

A wide-angle lens is also useful to show a large space as in the photo of the blue Dale Chilhuly piece installed at the old Union Station in Tacoma, Wash. Compare that photo with the photo of Chilhuly’s orange platters mounted on the station window. I used a telephoto lens for this photo to eliminate distracting elements of the station and to isolate the art. I also like the way the people walking by the window adds an element of scale to the image.

Telephoto lenses have variety of uses

Telephotos (lenses longer than 100mm in 35mm photography) can be used in all sorts of interior settings to isolate the work.

Sometimes you can even use a large lens aperture (like f/4) on the telephoto to throw distracting elements like furniture out of focus. Even in a gallery, I’ll use a short telephoto — a 100mm, 105mm, 135mm — to isolate a work from its surroundings.

As you shoot installed work you’ll be surprised to find yourself inventing some of your own techniques for each particular situation. That’s the way photography should work.

-Steve Meltzer is a Sarasota, Fla.-based photographer. He can be reached via e-mail at: stevefoto@compuserve.com.