The Dry Run Is the Picture: Documenting Your Work Before the Doors Open
Photo: Unidentified painter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There is a particular kind of tired that settles over a room after a private view. Glasses are stacked by the sink. Someone is looking for a lost coat. The good light has gone. And the camera comes out, finally, because the funding report is due and the press shots were never quite sorted.
That is not documentation. That is a cleanup operation.
For small UK projects, the pressure to capture everything on a shoestring is real. But the answer isn’t a better phone or a last-minute favour from a friend with a DSLR. It’s treating documentation as its own rehearsal: a booked session, a written plan and a room that still belongs to the work rather than the aftermath.
The private view is the worst time to get the picture
Private views are brilliant, chaotic and necessary. They are also terrible for images. Bodies block the sightlines. Coats land on plinths. The lighting is tuned for gossip, not for a camera. And the work itself changes once people are in the room — a projection gets a shadow, a floor piece gets walked on, a quiet corner becomes a cloakroom.
If you only photograph the show during opening hours, you are documenting the audience’s version of it. That can be useful. It is not the same as documenting the work.
A documentation rehearsal is a simple swap. Before the doors open, before the invigilators arrive, before the first guest asks where the toilets are, you book the space for two or three hours and make the work the only thing in the room. It is not glamorous. It is not a launch event. It is a call time.
Treat the camera like a collaborator with a call time
Most artists would not ask a performer to turn up without a schedule. Yet documentation often gets a vague text: “Can you come by after six?” That is how you end up with footage that is technically in focus and emotionally flat.
Give the camera a proper slot. Put it in the schedule alongside the technician, the invigilator and the person bringing the stepladder. Tell everyone who needs to be there — including collaborators who need to be credited, and anyone whose consent you still need to confirm.
For a small-budget project, this might mean one afternoon rather than a full production day. That is fine. A tight, well-planned session is better than a sprawling one with no shot list. If you are working with a filmmaker or photographer, send them the floor plan and any access notes in advance. If you are doing it yourself, treat the tripod as a collaborator that needs feeding with time.
Write the shot list from the funding report backwards
A shot list is not a creative constraint. It is a memory aid for future you, who will be trying to remember what the installation looked like in 2026 when the funding report asks for “high-quality images demonstrating public engagement.”
Start with the places the images will go. A press release needs one clean, wide, well-lit hero shot. A funding report might need proof of the work in situ, a detail, and a sense of audience or participation. An archive might need the unglamorous bits: the cable run, the label, the back of the projector, the thing you will forget in five years.
Then work backwards. What needs to be in frame? What needs to be moved? Which lights need to be switched on, and which ones need to be switched off because they flicker on video? Is there a reflection in the glass that only appears when the camera is at eye level? These are not fussy details. They are the difference between an image that gets used and one that sits in a folder called “final_final_2.”
Consent, credits and the bit people forget
Documentation is a collaboration, even when it is just you and a tripod. If other people are in the frame — performers, technicians, participants, volunteers — agree how the images will be used and how they will be credited. Do it before the session, not after the work has been posted.
A simple consent note is enough for most small projects: what is being captured, where it might appear, who to contact to withdraw permission. Keep it with the files. If someone asks not to be photographed, that is not an obstacle; it is information for the shot list.
Credits matter too. The photographer, the filmmaker, the assistant who held the reflector, the technician who rigged the light — name them in the file metadata and in the captions. UK arts funding increasingly asks for evidence of fair practice, and documentation is part of that picture. A beautiful image with no credit is a missed opportunity to show how the work was made.
Leave with a folder that makes sense
A documentation rehearsal should end with more than a memory card. It should end with a folder that a future collaborator, curator or funder can actually use.
Name files by project, date and shot type. Keep a contact sheet or a short clip log. Note the consent status. Write down the credits while everyone is still in the room. Back it up somewhere that is not the same laptop you take to the pub.
None of this is the exciting part. The exciting part is the work. But the work deserves a record that is made with the same care as the install — not scraped together after the last glass has been cleared. Book the room early. Write the list. Call the camera in. Shoot it before they arrive, and you will have something that still looks like yours.
