taking better product photos

One of the joys (and frustrations, at times) of the businessy part of crafting can be the photo taking. Since I started blogging and selling my wares, my photography skills have steadily improved, but I would not claim to be very good at it. Which is why whenever I see blog posts about product photography, I zoom right in (pun intended!). I recently saw a book on the Skinny Laminx blog ~ The Crafter's Guide to Taking Great Photos, and immediately ordered it. The day it arrived in the mail, I read it cover to cover and then started thinking about how/when to put it into practice. It's a really practical book with good diagrams and ideas for people with all levels of equipment ~ basically from zero to owning a nice DSLR (by the way, this is not a sponsored post).

The big tips from this book for me were:
~ use natural light (which I always do) and enhance that light if needed through reflection
~ use the camera's timer function and a tripod to free up your hands for reflection
~ props are important

So one sunny morning I set up a little area in front of a blank grey wall (sadly, all the walls of our apartment are grey) with a table, some props and some products (this was taken on my phone, so a little dodgy on the colours!) ...

This wall is perpendicular to the large window in the room, so I held up a white sheet to reflect the natural light onto the little set. You can see the results of "without sheet" and "with sheet" below:

The effects are subtle (the above photos have not been edited in any way) but you can see that the depth of the shadows on the right hand side of the photo (the side furtherest from the window) have been lessened quite a bit. The tea towel also appears much brighter. This was the final pic after only a tiny bit of fiddling in photoshop ...

Keep your eyes out for this pic over the coming days ... it might have something to do with a giveaway (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say-no-more!).

Best wishes with your own photography this week ~ I'm certainly a novice, but it's nice to share the learning. I plan on doing a whole lot more practicing with the camera ~ it's a work in progress. I'll leave you with another shot from that morning ...

More creativity here today!

P.S. Incase you're interested, my camera is an entry level Pentax K-r Digital SLR, with a 28-80mm Sigma lens (I also use a 105mm Sigma macro lens). I mostly use the "auto" function, but am venturing into the manual zone these days too!