Starfish Egg Tempera Painting

This week I finished an egg tempera painting of a starfish. I used a photo taken by Tony in the Maldives as reference. The painting is 7 x 9.5 inches.


Probably due to my lack of expertise in photography and setting up the correct lighting I'm never able to reproduce the full vibrancy of the colors when I photograph the paintings. Try as I might I have failed with every single photo I've taken to show the paintings on the site. Below is a photo taken with a different camera; this one is a lot darker, but it shows some of the richness of the reds and greens that occur in the original painting.

Unfortunately I'm never able to combine the richness of the colors with the brightness of the painting - one is always sacrificed for the other. Here are the two photos side by side, if you can extrapolate between the two, then, combined, they convey the overall impression.












Do you have any suggestions on how to manage both aspects in one photograph?