How to photograph your exhibitions yourself with a smartphone

The good news is that current smartphones produce images of sufficient quality for the vast majority of your communication needs. An iPhone 14 or a major tech brands Galaxy S23, to cite common models, carry 48-megapixel sensors capable of photographing artworks with colour fidelity and sharpness that are perfectly satisfactory for web and press use. What separates a mediocre amateur photograph from a usable professional image is not so much the equipment as the method. Here is how to achieve convincing results with the phone you already have in your pocket.

01Preparing the space before shooting

Preparing the space is the first step and arguably the most important one. Before reaching for your phone, begin by clearing your gallery of every distracting element. Brochures on the reception desk, packaging boxes in a corner, fingerprints on the glass, visible electrical cables on the floor: each of these details can ruin an otherwise well-composed photograph. Galerie Catherine Issert in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, which has a clean white space, achieves remarkable exhibition photographs precisely because every detail of the environment is controlled before the camera comes out.

Also check the condition of your walls. Fixing holes from previous exhibitions, scuffs and uneven paint patches will be mercilessly revealed by photography. If you cannot repaint between every exhibition, always keep a pot of white paint in the same shade as your walls for spot touch-ups before the photo session.

The floor deserves the same attention. A clean polished concrete or hardwood floor contributes to the professional atmosphere of the photograph. Mop or vacuum just before you start. These steps may seem tedious but they make the difference between an image that inspires confidence in online collectors and one that betrays a lack of rigour.

02Mastering natural and artificial light

Light is the parameter that most determines the quality of your photographs. In a gallery, you generally work with artificial lighting composed of adjustable track spots. This lighting is designed to enhance the artworks to the naked eye, but it can create problems in photography: reflections on varnished or glazed surfaces, overly harsh contrasts between lit and shadowed areas, colour casts linked to bulb temperature.

The first rule is to switch off every parasitic light source. Office fluorescent tubes, side lamps and illuminated display cases must be turned off during the shoot. Keep only the gallery's main artwork lighting. Galerie Perrotin uses uniform museum-grade lighting in all its spaces, which guarantees remarkable photographic consistency from one exhibition to the next.

If your gallery benefits from natural light, the time of day matters enormously. Shoot preferably in mid-morning or early afternoon, when sunlight is indirect and diffuse. Avoid direct sunlight, which creates patches of light on the walls and reflections on glazed works. On overcast days, natural light is ideal because it is uniform and soft. If direct sun enters your space, close the blinds or wait for another moment.

On your smartphone, disable the built-in flash. A phone's front flash is the worst possible light source for photographing artworks: it creates an intense central bright spot that crushes colours and generates reflections on every smooth surface. Instead, activate HDR mode (High Dynamic Range), available on all recent smartphones, which combines several exposures to balance the bright and dark areas of the image.

03Photographing individual artworks

For individual artwork photographs, which will serve your online catalogue and your product sheets on Artedusa, frontality is the absolute rule. Position yourself exactly in front of the work, at the same height as its centre. If the work is hung at the standard height of 1.50 metres at centre, your eyes and your phone should be at that same height. Any deviation upwards or downwards creates a perspective distortion that gives the work a trapezoidal shape instead of rectangular.

The distance to the work depends on its format. For a medium-sized work (approximately 80 by 100 centimetres), stand about two metres away. Use your phone's optical zoom (typically a x2 or x3 zoom) rather than moving closer with the default wide-angle lens. The wide-angle lens distorts straight lines, especially at the edges of the image, which is unacceptable when photographing a rectangular painting. The optical zoom compresses perspective and reproduces faithful proportions.

For works under glass, reflections are the main problem. The most effective technique is to shift slightly to the side, by a few centimetres, until your own reflection and that of your phone disappear from the glass surface. You can also switch off the spots directly illuminating the glass and keep only ambient lighting. Galerie Kamel Mennour, which regularly shows photographs and drawings under glass, masters this exercise by meticulously adjusting the orientation of each spot for every framed work.

Lock the focus and exposure by long-pressing on the artwork on your screen. This function, available on both iPhone and Android, prevents the phone from automatically recalculating these parameters between shots, ensuring consistency across the entire series.

04Photographing overall exhibition views

Overall views, also called installation views, are the photographs showing several works hung in the gallery space. They document your scenography and give the online viewer a sense of the exhibition's atmosphere. These images are essential for your press kits, social media and fair applications.

For overall views, use your phone's wide-angle lens (the default mode, no zoom). Position yourself in a corner of the gallery to capture the largest possible portion of the space. The ideal height is that of your eyes when standing, roughly 1.60 to 1.70 metres. Keep the phone perfectly horizontal: most smartphones have a built-in level in the camera app (a small crosshair or line that turns yellow when the device is level). This detail is crucial because a slightly tilted horizon gives an impression of carelessness in interior architecture photographs.

Take several angles for each room. Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris, which has several rooms over two floors, systematically documents each room from a minimum of four angles. This method ensures enough material to communicate about the exhibition in different formats: a square image for Instagram, a panoramic image for the website banner, a vertical image for a story.

05Retouching your photographs for free

Retouching is the step that transforms a raw photograph into a professional image. You do not need expensive software: the free applications Snapseed (available on iPhone and Android) and Lightroom Mobile (free version) offer all the necessary tools.

The three essential adjustments are white balance, brightness and cropping. White balance corrects the colour cast of your lighting. If your spots emit warm light (yellowish tint), reduce the colour temperature in Snapseed until your white walls appear truly white. If your lighting is cold LED type (bluish tint), slightly increase the temperature. The goal is for your wall white to be neutral, because it serves as the visual reference for the colours of the artworks.

Brightness is adjusted by slightly increasing exposure if the image is too dark, or reducing it if the white walls are overexposed (areas of pure white without nuance). The highlights slider recovers detail in areas that are too bright, while the shadows slider lightens areas that are too dark. Dealer Emmanuel Perrotin has often stressed in public talks that the quality of online visuals has become as important as the quality of physical hangings, because many collectors discover artworks on screen before seeing them in person.

Cropping corrects framing defects and straightens vertical and horizontal lines. In Snapseed, the Perspective tool corrects distortions related to the shooting angle, which is particularly useful when you have photographed a work slightly off-axis.

06Organising and archiving your photographs

Good organisation of your photographic files will save you considerable time in the long run. Create one folder per exhibition, named in the following format: the date in year-month format, followed by the artist's name and the exhibition title. Within each folder, separate individual artwork photographs from installation views.

Systematically export your photographs in high resolution (your phone's maximum resolution) for archiving, and create copies in web resolution (approximately 2,000 pixels wide) for your website and social media. The high-resolution files will serve for print publications, catalogues and press kits that institutions and journalists will request.

Back up your archives on an external hard drive in addition to cloud storage. Galleries that have lost their photographic archives following a hard drive crash or cloud account closure know that these images constitute an irreplaceable heritage documenting the history of their programme.

07When to call a professional despite everything

While smartphone photography suffices for everyday communication, certain occasions merit the investment in a professional photographer. Your gallery's inaugural exhibition, a major solo show by a programme artist, or an exhibition that will be the subject of a printed catalogue all justify higher-quality photographs. A professional photographer brings additional calibrated lighting, a full-frame sensor camera that excels in low light, and post-production mastery that guarantees impeccable colour fidelity.

For Artedusa partner galleries, professional-quality artwork photographs are a major asset for online visibility. Collectors browsing the platform make their contact decisions within seconds, and image quality is the first criterion that holds their attention. By mastering the smartphone photography techniques described here, you can maintain a regular flow of quality images on your Artedusa profile between professional sessions, thus ensuring a constant and polished visual presence.