Take A Picture

Despite my advanced state of zombification yesterday, I did manage to get done all the tasks I intended to...mostly. I relisted a couple of things after remaking them and, well, that's about it. I almost sat down to work out a new pattern, but I kept getting distracted by children and other household tasks. I did get one sale yesterday which provided me with one other piece to remake, but that's it. I do have the feeling this morning, that something interesting is about to happen. Let's just hope for good interesting and not bad interesting.

Since I don't have anything else to share really, I thought I'd just go ahead and answer a comment question I got this morning. The question was, how did I manage to capture the bright colors of the neon pieces? Well, I'm no photographer and I certainly will never claim to be partly because my brother is and has taught it and he'd likely laugh at the thought. What I have done though is learned a lot about capturing product images over the last six years selling online. The first tip, there is no substitute for natural light. Outside of an expensive studio setup with proper lighting, reflectors, etc, the best you can do is bright, indirect sunlight. The other thing I've learned is to tell the camera to let more light in than you might think is perfect. Use the ISO and aperture settings to get that image bright and if your camera has a white balance make sure it is on the right setting for your light conditions. It is easier to edit a photo darker than it is to make it brighter...in my experience anyway. Speaking of editing, I don't use a single picture that hasn't gone through some sort of tweaking in a simple editing program. I adjust levels and sharpness and try my best to make the colors match real life, but I'm just using slider bars, nothing precise.

So, what if you can't get natural light? Well, I've used a light box and they can work, but they create really sterile looking pictures. If you have daylight light bulbs, use those. Avoid a yellow cast and if you can't you must make sure that your white balance corrects for that or you will get a yellow picture which try as you might, won't ever perfectly edit away. Let's see, any other hints. Don't take pictures on a bedspread with the date showing in the corner and for goodness sake, focus the camera, though good lighting helps with that too. There are tons more bits of unsolicited advice I could offer, but my picture aren't all perfect and I'd feel funny going on about it. I did however manage to write up this blog post with no significant events to share so, go me. There is no set plan for today either so, I guess we'll just see which way they wind blows.