My son photographed 40 paintings for the website and now I cannot find the one I liked

For two days my son has been photographing my paintings for the website. He has made a white cloth, two lamps borrowed from the neighbour, and he is very particular about the angle. Forty paintings he has done. It is good work and I am grateful, because before this we were only selling through the cooperative in Darbhanga and whatever the buyers who came to the house would take.

But here is my difficulty. On the screen, my Kohbar and my Durga all look the same size. The line which I pulled for three days with a squirrel-hair brush looks thin like a hair, and the fish which I made the size of my palm looks small like nothing. A painting is not made to be looked at in a small box on a phone. It is made to be sat in front of.

He is telling me this is how people buy now, they will not come to Madhubani to see. Maybe he is right. Still I am thinking we should put one photo where he has kept a matchbox beside the painting, just so the person knows. My mother never measured anything in her life and now I am measuring for a machine.

If any of you are selling your work this way, kindly tell me one thing. Do you send the actual size, or the person will understand by themselves?

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6 comments

Teddy Lin·3h

the scale thing is real and it's the one thing photography genuinely cannot fix. a jpeg has no size. i paint flat and graphic so i lean on scale hard, and every time i've shot my own work the big pieces come out looking like the small ones, which is exactly backwards from what you want a buyer to feel.

one thing that helped me: put a human in the frame somewhere. not a model, just your own hand or a chair or the door edge. gives the eye something to measure against. won't bring back the squirrel-hair line, nothing will, but it stops everything reading as the same rectangle.

also your son is doing more than most. two lamps and a white cloth is a real setup. tell him the internet says good work, then make him shoot the kohbar again with a hand in it.

Kasia Nowak·2h

The hand in the frame is the trick I keep forgetting, thank you for the reminder. I paint pastel on toned paper, mostly faces, and I spent a whole afternoon once redoing a chin because on my phone the drawing looked like a stamp. It was 50 by 70. The chin was fine. I had wrecked it for nothing.

The one addition I would make, and I say it with no certainty: a plain measurement is not enough on its own. A hand next to a painting tells you how big it is, but not how big it feels. The squirrel-hair line will still vanish. Maybe that is the part a buyer has to be told, in words, next to the image. Which is a clumsy solution, I know.

Your son sounds like he is doing it properly, with the cloth and the lamps. Mine would have used the ceiling light and a shrug.

Ramesh JhaOP·1h

Ji, the chin story is making me laugh and also feel bad, because I know that afternoon. My son also once told me a whole border was crooked and I redid it, and then the border was the same as before. Only the screen was crooked.

But your point I am taking seriously. Measurement is one thing, feeling is another. So now I am thinking, for each painting we will write two or three lines in my own words, what the line actually is, how many days, what the fish means in the Kohbar. Not as selling-talk. As the truth of it. A buyer who cannot stand in my room should still know that the peacock's eye was done with one hair and one breath.

You have given me something to think on, and I am grateful for it. Pastel on toned paper, 50 by 70, that is no small work either. Keep the chin as it was, ji.

Ramesh JhaOP·2h

Ji, you are saying the true thing. A jpeg has no size, yes. My son also was telling me the same, that the screen does not know how big is anything, and still I was not believing it fully. Now two people are saying, so I must accept.

The hand in the frame, this is a good idea, simple also. I will tell him to put his hand near the edge of the Kohbar, so the buyer can understand how much space the whole thing is taking. But one worry is there. In our tradition the painting is not to be touched carelessly, and also the hand in the photo may look like we are showing off the hand and not the work. But for the size, it will help. We can try with one or two paintings and see.

And the squirrel-hair line, you are right, nothing will bring it back. Three days of work. On the phone it is just a thin line, same as a line I could make in one minute. That is the thing which is paining me most, I am telling you honestly.

Thank you ji, for understanding the difficulty and not just saying the photos are nice. 🙏

Elin Holm·3h

The screen flattens everything. That is the whole problem and your son cannot photograph his way out of it, because a jpeg has no scale. A squirrel-hair line and a wall-sized field become the same number of pixels.

What worked for me with paper work: put one object in the frame that everyone knows the size of. A hand, a coin, a matchbox, the brush itself laid beside the painting. Then the eye reading the website has something to measure against, and suddenly the thin line reads as thin instead of as a line.

Also ask him to shoot one detail, close, at the actual size it sits on the wall. Not a nice image, an honest one. Good luck, forty is a lot of work on both sides.

Ramesh JhaOP·2h

Ji, the coin and the hand thing I understand at once, because that is how we always showed work anyway. When buyers used to come to the house, my mother would put the painting on the floor and stand near it, so the person sees how tall it is. On the screen that whole thing is lost.

The detail shot at actual size, this one I did not think of at all. That squirrel-hair line, when it is photographed close and shown big, the whole reason for that line will come out. Three days of work on one border, people should see what it is.

I am going to tell my son today itself. He will be happy also, because he was getting tired of me saying the paintings look wrong and he could not understand why. Now at least we have the reason and the remedy both. Thank you ji, this was of real use.