It Had to be Done.

For the first time in ages the sun is shining and rather than frolicking about outside, I am utilizing the sunny daylight to re-photograph some etsy listings. When I first started on etsy, I was sans-tripod. This is not the best way to attempt still photography.

When I got the tripod, I was still fortunate to have a lovely outdoor location in Toronto to use as a backdrop, namely the remains of a brick facade in Rosetta McLain Park in Toronto's east end. Though the location was a ideal, sometimes my lighting was not. Too sunny, too cloudy, rarely just right. Then this past winter, my ideal location became blanketed with a foot of snow and that left me the new challenge of trying to figure out how to photograph well using indoor, often artificial light. It was also this past winter that I discovered the macro-setting on my camera, which is an indispensable feature. And then as you know, spring came and once the snow melted once again revealing my ideal location, I was packing boxes into a U-Haul and leaving my lovely shooting location far behind.

The result is that in the year and a half that I have had my etsy shop, several different styles of photography have found their way into my shop listings. This, I believe, does not serve to make my shop as appealing as possible. It looks choppy and incohesive. With the buying season looming, it is time to fix this issue. So today I am hard at work, reshooting some of my worst photos, while longing to be outside.

In a nod to one of my favorite quiet past-times many of my new listing photos use antique books as props, as in this example.



Below, was my original listing photo. I love the look of the exposed brick behind the bust, but the detail of the beads was far too washed out.



If at first you don't succeed.....