Last week was devoted to hand washing and blocking finished goods that need to be photographed, have their descriptions written, and then listed on Etsy. Why does this take so much time, you may ask. Mostly because I am a total tard when it comes to taking photos.
This weekend has been devoted to photo shoots. My head model, Valerie, and I have been busy at work. Amelie, my inner assistant, could not keep the studio organized amidst the frenzy, and when last I saw her yesterday evening she was sitting in the corner crying.
Have I mentioned how tiresome it is shooting product photos? How frustrating? How time consuming?
Yes, you see some pretty pictures here on the blog. Yes, I have come a long way. But what you don't see, in the hundreds of photos that get deleted, is the sludge. A girl has her pride.
Hats are pretty easy to photograph because Valerie is such an attractive head model. Shawls and scarves are killer difficult, though. We don't really have a great spot in the house for shooting on a dress form. Any places where there is a blank, uncluttered, lighted-colored wall is drenched in yellow light if the sun is out and dreary as crazy when it's raining. When the light has been ideally overcast recently, I've been hard at work at my day job.
My dream is to eventually set up an actual photo-shoot spot in the daylight basement using a backdrop with a better dress form or a mannequin. But that will involve cleaning out a truly gross storage room and will have to wait until after the holidays.
During the day on Friday and yesterday, I shot lots of photos of scarves, almost all of which were useless with bad draping and horrible color quality even though I have learned how to adjust the white balance meter in my camera.
Where I do have luck is in using my light box, but the dress form won't fit in it, of course.
Valerie is the one who thought of letting her model some scarfs. The idea had some limitations, but we tried it.
The photos in the first batch were mostly pretty good. So we tried some more. The next photo is actually a cowl. You should see how bad the photos had been on the dress form.
This cowl was made from some mohair/wool/acrylic/rayon bouclé that was rescued from a wrap with a rip in it. I'm guessing at the fiber content.
Here is the finished rose lattice scarf which you saw in progress here.
Valerie really had fun with this scarf, and had to try it ever so many ways.
When we got to the point of shooting this last photo, though, I knew it was time to quit.
It was late and we were both pretty rummy. I waited until today to photograph purses. Don't get me started on what a challenge that is!
4 comments:
I like your photos! I agree that it is a time consumer. I don't have a light box but I've been playing around with some white boards. But for my mannequin shots it's a real pain. We haven't had any sunlight, I have many dark walls, etc. I'll be watching for any advice you might have.
Your photos are really nice!
I understand what you say about time consuming! I spent days taking pictures of my stuff, and still I'm not happy with the result:-)))
Great photos of fantastic knitting! Thanks for commenting on my blog! Work is intersting, but so is knitting!
Thank you for posting about this... it's a relief to hear! I spend forever photographing (I hope to get a light box, one day). I move my items around (too light, too dark), change camera settings and delete loads of photos!
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