After a loss adjuster has been through a fire or a burglary, the difference between a settled claim and a disputed one is usually paperwork. Specifically, photographs good enough to establish what the object was, its condition, and its scale. I have photographed for LAPADA dealers continuously since 1991, and a meaningful part of that work ends up in insurance files rather than catalogues. The same small set of shots comes up every time a claim succeeds. Here is the list, and the reasoning behind each frame.
The object must be identifiable
Start with the whole object, square on, filling the frame. Then shoot the maker's mark, signature, hallmarks, foundry stamp or any label. On silver, get the hallmark set sharp enough to read the assay office, date letter and maker's initials: that single frame can date a piece to within a year and is often the item that settles a provenance argument. Use a macro setting or a 60mm equivalent lens, with raking light from one side, and if the marks are worn, take a second frame with the light from the opposite side. Wear reads differently depending on direction.
Serial numbers matter more than people expect. On clocks, barometers, firearms and studio ceramics, the number is the object's identity in an insurer's records. Photograph it every time, even on pieces documented before, because numbers are how recovered property gets matched after a theft.
Condition is the part people skip
A claim pays on condition as much as identity. A Georgian chest in original finish and the same chest heavily restored are different values, and the loss adjuster will know the difference. Document condition honestly:
- Overall frames of front, back and sides, so later damage can be distinguished from pre-existing.
- Close frames of any existing damage: old repairs, veneer losses, splits, replaced handles.
- For paintings, the face flat and evenly lit, then the reverse, including labels, stencils and exhibition marks. The back of a picture is half its biography.
- For ceramics and glass, a frame showing the base ring and any restoration, with light raking across the surface so overpaint shows as a sheen difference.
- For pieces fresh from the restorer, shoot before-and-after frames if the restorer can supply the earlier photographs, so the file shows what changed and when.
Twenty condition frames take half an hour and remove most of the room for an "it was already damaged" argument later.
Scale and context
Photograph the object with a ruler or, for larger pieces, a standard object of known size. Scale saves arguments about dimensions. Then take one wider environmental shot: the piece in the room, on the wall, in situ. Insurers like context frames because they show possession and placement, and they help you rebuild a room's contents list from memory years later. When I document a whole house for a client, each wall of each room gets shot before any object close-ups, for exactly this reason.
Jewellery and small valuables need their own treatment. Photograph each piece against a neutral, non-reflective background, dead straight, with the clasp, hallmark and any stone certificates in frame. Then group-photograph the storage box or safe contents as a whole, because a single wide frame of a jewellery box interior is often what triggers a claimant's memory of items they had forgotten. Scale matters even more here: a 5 mm sapphire and a 3 mm sapphire look identical without a rule in frame. An insurer who cannot size the stone will value it at the lower figure, and they are right to.
Technical settings that matter
Shoot raw plus JPEG, or at minimum the highest quality JPEG your camera offers, and never compress the files afterwards. Use a tripod and base ISO where possible: noise destroys fine detail in grain and craquelure, and that detail is your evidence. White-balance to a grey card or a clean sheet of white paper, because a mahogany table photographed warm reads as a different wood. Get exposure right in camera rather than fixing it later; heavy shadow recovery introduces artefacts that a sharp adjuster can question.
Do not retouch insurance documentation. No dust removal, no straightening beyond minor levelling, and certainly no restoration of damaged areas in post. The photographs need to stand as an unaltered record. Keep the original files untouched and work from copies, and store a backup set somewhere other than the house, cloud storage or a relative's drive, since the event being claimed for often destroys the local copy too.
What a professional adds
Most of this list is achievable with a modern phone and some care. What a studio brings is consistency: controlled lighting that renders surfaces accurately, correct perspective on tall furniture, and twenty-five years of knowing which details an assessor will ask for next. If the collection is significant, an annual update session, new acquisitions shot and condition frames refreshed, takes 2 to 3 hours and typically costs a fraction of one percent of the collection's value. It removes almost all ambiguity from the file. Our commission process for catalogue and insurance work is on the services page, current day rates are on the prices page, and the copyright position for commissioned photography is covered in a previous article.
Update the record whenever something changes: a purchase, a sale, a restoration, a house move. An out-of-date inventory is better than nothing, but only just. The best time to photograph a collection is the day before you need the file, and nobody knows which day that is.