With cold weather and Christmas just around the corner, I finally decided it's time to get serious about photographing and listing all the scarves I've been making all year long (yes, I make scarves year round). Since I don't have a model or a dressmaker's dummy, I've tried photographing them lots of different ways (on tables, on trees, etc), but often they just look like something unidentifiable, or, in many cases, like a colorful roll of toilet-paper. Which is interesting, but not exactly what I was going for. Observe; my tree-model and toilet-paper roll pose:
So I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and be my own model. My sister happens to be a really good photographer (unlike me) with a kind of fancy camera (also unlike me). So the other day, when the lighting seemed just right, we went out to the yard to take some photos.
I put on what I deemed a nice, but un-distracting top, surprisingly free from the bleach spots, stains, and holes that adorn so many of my tops, and what I thought were my nicest jeans. After seeing said jeans in photos, I think maybe I need some new jeans. Luckily, my top half was really all that was needed for most of the photos.
So then we got down to it, and just "standing" is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. Because you have to stand without looking strange, or awkward, or like you're missing a limb... all these things. And my sister the whole time giving me helpful tips, like "you look really weird when you do that" and "get rid of that hand." Get rid of it?
Amazingly, a lot of the photos turned out pretty decent (after some photoshop magic to remove some "skin imperfections" that my sister's fancy camera picked up in superb and unforgiving detail).
By the way, did you know you can edit your photos for free on Photoshop. com? I just discovered this little miracle. I know there are a lot of free editing programs out there (I usually use Picasa) but none of the ones I've used so far have the touch-up tool that I found so helpful in evening out my skin tone. It was actually really therapeutic. Zap, zap, zap, zap! I wish smooth, clear skin were so easy in real life!
Nice photos! I agree that it helps to see things on a person to really be able to tell what they look like. (I however can't do that as I sell jewellery...) :)
ReplyDeletenice shots! looks like it was totally worth the effort, your scarves looks really cool here and i really like the lovely green backgrounds, it makes the photos sparkle :)
ReplyDeleteThese are really nice pictures (and I love the flowery scarf...)
ReplyDeleteLove the scarves, especially the green striped one. Great job. I understand the photography dilemma too. I hate to have to use myself for modeling my jewelry, but sometimes you just can't wait around for your friends to give you the time for a photo shoot, even when you offer free jewelry as payment. You did a nice job. I know you may not want to, but you should have your face in the pictures. I've been told a number of times that it's best for marketing purposes.
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