You have made the work; now most people will meet it as a thumbnail on a phone. That is a hard introduction for a painting with subtle greys in it, or a bowl whose glaze shifts from green to blue as you turn it. Poor photography flattens texture, drains colour and turns clean edges to mush. The fix is not expensive kit. It is controlled light, a camera kept square, and the discipline not to "improve" the work on screen.

Two hours of patient shooting will serve a portfolio for years, and it costs nothing but attention. The goal is an image faithful enough that someone who will never hold the piece still understands how big it is, what it is made of, and how the surface behaves as light moves across it.

Set up before you take a single frame

Most first attempts fail for boring technical reasons. Keep the camera parallel to the artwork — not tilted up or down — and centred on the middle of the piece. A tripod is ideal, but a stack of books works. Fill the frame, leaving a small margin to crop.

Squareness deserves a proper check. Tilt the camera and a rectangle becomes a trapezium, one edge short and the other long, and every straight line in the work begins to lean. Run a tape measure from the camera position to the top-left and top-right corners of the piece. If the two numbers match, you are square. Marking the tripod feet on the floor with tape saves you repeating the measurement every time you swap a canvas.

Turn the flash off and leave it off. Use the self-timer or the volume button so pressing the shutter does not shake the camera. On a phone, tap and hold the artwork to lock focus and exposure, then drag the exposure slider down if highlights are blowing out. Avoid digital zoom; walk closer, or for a large canvas stand further back and crop afterwards. A wide lens used up close will bow the edges outwards.

Before anything else, clean the lens. One thumbprint on a phone camera produces the soft, hazy, faintly glowing image that artists most often blame on bad lighting.

Light it evenly, then soften it

Two qualities matter: evenness and softness. An overcast day in open shade is the best free light you will find, and a north-facing window is the next best thing. Indoors, use two identical lamps at roughly 45 degrees to each side of the work, at the same height and distance.

• Diffuse every light source. Tracing paper, a white shower curtain or a proper diffusion panel turns a harsh bulb into a soft, even glow.
• Do not mix light types. Daylight from a window plus a warm ceiling bulb will tint one side of the work orange, and no amount of editing will fully fix it.
• For glossy or varnished pieces, move the lights further to the sides so reflections bounce away from the lens rather than into it.
• Check the edges of the frame, not just the artwork. Your own shadow, a lamp flex and a stray mug all end up in shot.
• Keep the two lamps equidistant. Light falls off fast — double the distance and you have roughly a quarter of the brightness — so half a metre of difference shows up as a visible gradient across the work.

Stand where the camera is and look at the piece with your own eyes. If the light looks harsh or lopsided to you, it will look worse on screen.

Choose a background that stays out of the way

Neutral wins. A mid-grey or soft white surface lets the work do the talking, while a bright wall bounces its colour back onto the piece — a red wall behind a pale canvas will tint the shadows. Hang framed work rather than leaning it against something, and use your camera's grid to check the top edge of the frame is level.

For ceramics and sculpture, curve a large sheet of paper from the wall down onto the table so there is no horizon line behind the object. Matte paper is easier than glossy, which reflects everything. Shoot a few angles: front, three-quarter, side, plus a detail of the rim or the foot.

If the work is small, resist the temptation to shoot it on a cluttered desk. A sheet of grey card costs very little and instantly makes a sketchbook, a brooch or a set of tiles look like it belongs in a gallery rather than on a kitchen table.

Get the colour right

This is where artists wince. Automatic white balance guesses, and it often guesses wrong.

• Put a grey card in the first frame of each setup. Use it to set white balance in editing, then apply that setting to the rest of the session.
• Shoot raw if you can. JPEGs bake in the camera's contrast and saturation boost, and phone auto-enhance modes push colour further still. Turn those off.
• Edit with your screen brightness around half. A blazing screen makes an accurate image look dull, and you will over-brighten it in response.
• Place the actual piece beside the screen and compare. If the work reads warmer or greener, adjust white balance rather than saturation.
• Do not chase a "punchy" look. Saturation and contrast sliders make photographs pop and make paintings lie.

A calibrated monitor helps if you have one, but a grey card and a dimmed screen get you most of the way.

Adjust for the medium

Paintings and works on paper

Texture is the tricky part. Front light shows colour; a low side light reveals brushwork and canvas weave but drops tiny shadows into every ridge, which can read as dirt at thumbnail size. A good compromise is one soft frontal light plus a weaker light from one side, so the surface is legible without being exaggerated.

Work behind glass is a battle. If the frame allows it, take the piece out for the shoot and shoot the artwork itself. If it must stay glazed, work in a darkened room with one diffused light at 45 degrees and drape a black cloth behind the camera so there is nothing bright left to reflect.

Ceramics, glass and metal

Reflections are the subject here, so control them rather than kill them. A large sheet of white foam board on one side and a black card on the other lets you shape where the highlights fall. Bounce light into dark glazes with white card, and use black card to deepen the shadow side of stainless steel or silver. A polarising filter, or simply moving the lights, tames the worst glare.

Textiles, prints and mixed media

Fabrics reward raking light, which shows weave, pile and the memory of a fold. Hang textiles vertically with a gentle weight at the bottom edge rather than laying them flat. Prints and drawings with pale washes and fine pencil lines need even, shadowless light — anything dramatic will lose the line work entirely.

Build a complete set, not one hero image

A single flattering photograph raises a question it cannot answer: what is it, really? Give viewers a set that does the explaining for you.

• The full view. Front on, square, the whole piece inside the frame.
• A three-quarter or angled view. Shows depth, thickness and the profile of a frame or rim.
• One or two details. A close shot of a glaze pooling, a stitched seam or the edge of a brushstroke does more for a portfolio than a paragraph of description.
• A scale reference. A hand, a pencil or a coin beside the work tells people whether the piece is a postcard or a door.
• An in-situ shot if it helps. A painting above a sofa or a pot on a shelf shows the work in the world, but keep it plain — the story is the art, not the furniture.

Export files that still look right on the web

Careful shooting is undone at the last step. Most galleries and portfolio platforms will shrink whatever you upload, so give them something generous and correctly colour-managed.

1. Convert to sRGB. It is the colour space browsers expect; wider spaces will shift on other people's screens.
2. Resize so the long edge is around 1600 to 2000 pixels, and never upscale a smaller file to get there.
3. Save as JPEG at around quality 80. Above that, file size grows and almost nobody can see the difference.
4. Ignore the old advice about "72 dpi". Dots per inch has no meaning on screen — pixel dimensions are all that matter.
5. Name files consistently, such as surname-title-medium-year. It helps search, and it looks professional when a gallery downloads them.
6. Write a caption with title, year, medium and dimensions in inches and centimetres. Buyers and curators look for it first.

Then do the final test: open your images on your phone at thumbnail size. If the piece still reads — the greys distinct, the edges clean, the colour close to the object on your desk — the photography has done its job. The work is the subject; the photograph should be invisible.

Photo: Nothing Ahead / Pexels