Documentation Tips

We receive a number of submissions every cycle that are obviously interesting, beautiful works, yet unfortunately are not documented in a way that allows us to print them. We want to help. To that end, we thought it would be nice to provide some tips and tricks for documenting your work. Obviously, performance and installation work may have special challenges. But these tips should be helpful for flat work.

  • Take your work out of its frame, especially if there is glass or acrylic in front of the image
  • Use a good digital SLR camera, not your phone.
  • Use a tripod so the image is sharp and not blurred from camera shake or your own body movement – even in bright lighting!
  • Place your work on a table or wall so it lays flat, not leaned up against the wall at an angle or with the corners popping up
  • Use 50-75mm (“normal”) lens setting so the image stays square, not distorted from a wide angle lens setting
  • Keep the camera sensor parallel to the work of art. Otherwise your rectangular work will be a trapezoid.
  • Try to use natural light or white light. A good spot is outside or near large windows with a northern exposure (if you are in the northern hemisphere. Use a southern exposure in the southern hemisphere). Fluorescent lighting is yellow and will make your work look yellowish too. That’s not good.
  • Use multi-directional lighting so that the lighting is even. Gallery lighting is rarely sufficient for taking documentation shots of your work. Galleries light from above, you want to light from either side.
  • Be careful not have any shadows falling across your work or on the wall behind it, if at all possible.
  • Make sure you crop out the background (wall, table, frame, etc.) and hanging mechanisms (pins, clips, tape, etc.).
  • Color correct and edit the image in Photoshop so the colors are as accurate as possible. You will have to do less of this if you use good lighting.
  • We do not edit the images you send us in any way. Ever. So make sure your documentation is the best it can be, or we won’t publish it.
  • If you have questions about shooting your work and would like our help, please contact us at thehandmagazine@icloud.com