I didn’t make them recently, but I took better pictures today during the 20 minutes of constant sunshine so I updated one of the listings and added pieces that have been waiting for a couple of months to get into my Etsy shop. Now the Boy wants to play his games, so I’m getting bumped. Enjoy!
My wedding is five years behind me now. I was one of those laid-back brides who probably would have eloped if I didn’t fear bodily harm from the family (plus hubby wanted a big wedding–what’s with that???). I don’t envy those of you who are agonizing over wedding decisions. Maybe these wedding favor choices will make it a bit easier?
Available in my Etsy shop as a custom order, and coming soon to my webpage.
Backgrounds. Backgrounds can either make or break your photograph. Take this image:
Holy Busy Background Batman! Busy backgrounds compete with your product. These buttons are lost on this paper. Besides everything that’s going on with the patterned paper, the value (ie brightness or darkness) of the buttons is pretty much the same as the paper, so they REALLY disappear. Compare it to this photo:
Not very “artsy,” but you can actually see that there are buttons in this photo.
Compare these:
See what a difference contrast makes?
Another note about backgrounds: I try not to use something that has a lot of texture (ie heavy-weave fabrics, heavily grained wood, etc.). Why? Sometimes it can wreak havoc on your macro setting. You take your photos, get back to the computer to edit them, and discover that your camera was focusing on the weave in the fabric rather than the details in your work. My two backgrounds of choice are my trusty piece of slate, and subtle scrapbook papers. I have also seen the pages from old books used well as backgrounds, but you need to make sure that your piece is substantial enough to compete with the text. If you like the look but the text is too busy, you can always take a lightened photocopy of the page and use that.
Oh, and watch out for brightly colored backgrounds. Not only do they affect the color of your item, but neon colored backgrounds are hard on the eyes. Along those lines, I try to wear neutral colored shirts when I’m taking my pictures, as the color of the shirt can reflect off the color of your item and ruin a whole photo session (she learned when all the photos that she took looked orange thanks to the coral-colored t-shirt!).
Before you click that shutter button, check to see if there’s anything distracting in the background! Like this:
No amount of cropping is going to get rid of that dresser in the background.
Here’s a picture before cropping:
Eh. Solid background, but the earrings are small, and there’s that line cutting through the photo from the window molding. BUT, the bones of the photo are good. See what happens when it gets cropped:
Your homework: Take a look at the items that are recently listed on Etsy. Which items catch your eye? Which ones don’t and why? Photo contrast will grab your eye, photo styling will keep it there. Check out your favorite sellers. What is it about their shop that draws you in? Don’t copy their style (or products–YIKES!), but you can draw inspiration from other shops.
Next time: Get that shot!
Before I start blabbing on about backgrounds and such, I want to show you my really high-tech photography setup. Actually, I have two, depending on whether I’m at home or at the office. Here’s my home setup:
Impressive, huh? This is our deck (we just moved our sand bucket, hence the mess on the floor). I have a piece of slate that I set on the arm of that chair. In the early afternoon this chair is in the shade, but it’s still bright enough out to get my pictures taken. This picture was taken in the early evening, so the lighting isn’t that great here.
Here’s my office setup:
This window only gets direct light later in the afternoon. Even then I can pull that stand away from the window so my work isn’t in sunlight (and also doesn’t have any cast shadows across it). After I took the above shot I took this one:
The only editing I’ve done on this picture so far was to reduce it from 28″x21″ to 6″x4.5″ (I should add that I save it as a copy so I can go back and edit the original again if needed). I used my Macro setting on my camera for this piece. No flash, and I didn’t even have to adjust the camera exposure (ie brighten or darken the photo). The editing process becomes much easier when the lighting is right from the beginning. Here’s a little hint I picked up: if you take a photo of a piece of white paper, and it looks blue in the photo, then you don’t have enough lighting. You can compensate for that to a certain extent when you edit your photos, but it can really alter the color of your product if you do too much tweaking.
Next time: Backgrounds.
My son has a horrible cold, so I spent the weekend nursing him. He’s feeling a little better today, but now it’s breaking up so he’s having coughing fits (including all night last night). We watched lots of kiddie movies this weekend, and right now we’re watching “Jungle Book” again. I’m heading down to North Berwick this afternoon to take the dog to the vet and to get the little kiln. I’ve had some custom orders coming from the website lately and need to be able to unload the kiln the next day after a firing, rather than the next time I make the trek to NB.
I made a couple of jewelry pieces this weekend, along with some greenware pieces to fire this evening. I had some glaze issues in the last firing: minor, but of course they affected pretty much every piece for the orders. So they’re getting re-fired this evening. See that–that’s my eye twitching.
Here’s the bracelet and necklace I made. Waiting on some 18ga copper wire to make the clasp for the necklace. I’m pretty sure I’ll be making more of those eggs–love how they came out!
My son went to bed early last night with a nasty cold, so I had a little extra time in the evening to work towards my goal of stocking the flower shop with new jewelry. I turned on Netflix streaming and watched episode after episode of “My Name is Earl.” That show totally cracks me up. Anyway, this is what was made. The necklace isn’t completed b/c I need to make some sort of clasp. I was going to just use a lobster claw, but do you think I can find my brass ones? I was too lazy at the time to get up and get more ear wires, so I’ll have to add those today (and make some copper ones, since apparently I don’t have any). There’s an assortment of wood, lucite, glass, and metal beads in there. I was working at the coffee table, which isn’t ideal since I have beads all over the place.
I’m off to go tend to the boy. He’s in a good mood, considering he’s so sick. Can’t seem to take any cold meds–even the children’s formulas, which are supposed to be safe, make him wired. We’re sticking to the humidifier, lots of liquids, and maybe a few Tylenol thrown into the mix.
over to Andrew Thornton’s blog, where he’s giving away this gorgeous lucite collection this week:
Oh boy….I have a feeling that even if I don’t win I’ll still be ordering a selection of these….
I spent the past couple of days getting glazed pieces ready for the kiln. I had a few custom orders that needed to be filled. Those thread dividers I found in the office attic are working great:
The slot on the far right is filled with stoneware, so there will be some different offerings in the Etsy shop next week (hoping to fire those on Monday).If I had my act together I could have put all the beads on my firing wires and had them ready to go in the kiln today. As it is, the kiln is cooling down now.
I received some new chain from Rings & Things the other day. I made a couple of necklaces for Flowers on the Falls:
For those of you who are interested, that background is actually a file folder. Although the color is attractive, it makes it difficult to get a correct color rendition when I’m taking photographs, which is why I try to stick to a neutral background.
The boy is sick. It will probably be a long weekend, judging by how sick my father was with it over the past week. I don’t know if I’ll be able to play in the clay at all this weekend, but I want to get more jewelry to stock at the flower shop. That’s the goal, anyway.
Now that the kiln is off, I need to go pick Isaac up at my mother’s. Till we meet again 
OK, day late, dollar short. I promised way back in January to do some posts on product photography, then surgery, work, and life interferred. Now is as good a time as any to start. Stay tuned, as I plan on breaking this topic up into many posts. If you have any questions that you’d like addressed, leave them in the comment section and I’ll try to answer them in upcoming posts. Here’s what I have planned so far:
I want to talk a little bit about cameras first. If you are not familiar with digital cameras at all then I recommend you find an introductory book to guide you along. I am not going to go into detail about different cameras, but I will discuss my camera with you. Believe me now when I tell you: You do NOT need an expensive camera to take great shots!!! My camera is a Sony Cybershot DSC-W150, which retailed for about $250. I purchased mine refurbished for $125, then had to buy a battery and charger. Let me show you the two most important features that I use on my camera:
The P on the top dial stands for “Program Auto,” which allows me to adjust settings like exposure, white balance, and more (I’ll discuss these later). On the bottom dial is a little tulip icon, which is the macro setting. This allows me to take close up pictures of my beads and have them be in focus. If you make jewelry or anything else with small details, this is probably the most important feature to look for in a camera.
My camera allows me to save images in sizes up to 8 MB. If you are planning on taking a lot of photos, invest in a memory card. If you think that you might use your images in print ads, then you should save them in a high resolution. I save my images at 3 MB, which would allow for quality 4×6 or 5×7 prints. I keep an unedited copy of all of my images on CD, then I use an edited copy for my website and Etsy listings.
Next installment: setting up for a photo session.
These are some of my new designs that are now available on my website. Pieces on my site are made to order; for those of you in need of instant gratification, I have items listed on Etsy. Next week I’ll be adding some connectors and buttons, but this weekend we’re having a little runaway without the boy (just a day, but what a difference). Included in this trip will be a stop at Portland Pottery so I can stock up on some stoneware clay. This could get dangerous!
