Field Manual

Library

Photograph your tools as reference

Tools and materials make good reference because they hold still. How to photograph a desk or a set of tools so the pictures are useful when you draw, repair or restock later.

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A wooden desk laid out with containers, twine, scissors, a phone, a mug, a notebook and small plants.

In this guide

  1. Photograph the whole, then the part
  2. Hold the camera square
  3. Pick one object and follow it
  4. Label before you forget

You will need

  • A camera or phone
  • A clear table, floor or patch of grass to lay things out on
  • Twenty minutes in steady light

A set of tools is patient. It stays still while you work out what makes each piece look the way it does, which makes it ideal reference for shape, proportion and how light falls across metal and wood. The same pictures double as an inventory.

Photograph the whole, then the part

Take one frame that shows everything together, even if it is not beautiful: the whole desk, or every tool in a row. It is the map for every detail you photograph afterwards.

Hold the camera square

Hold the camera parallel to the surface: directly above a table, or level with a wall of hooks. Angled shots make handles look shorter and blades wider than they are, which matters when you draw from the picture later.

Pick one object and follow it

Choose a single object, such as a pair of scissors, a print block or a ball of twine, and photograph it three times in different light or from different distances. Three frames of one thing teach more than thirty of everything.

Two wooden print blocks with drawn scenes beside a set of marker pens on a table.
Closer in: two print blocks and the pens used to draw on them. A frame like this records the state of a work in progress as well as the tools.

Label before you forget

Name the files with the object and the view, for example print-blocks_pens_close.jpg, and file them under Objects, as described in the reference library guide.