3 QuickTips for perfectly white backgrounds

1. The backdrop:  My favorite material for white backdrops is white marine vinyl. It is heavy, durable, washable, and as you can see, it photographs well. I have about 4 yards of white marine vinyl from JoAnn's. I can hang it or lay it out as needed.

2.  The lighting: The best lighting is outside on an overcast day. Sometimes you need to recreate that. On blustery days, I have been able to set up in the sun and wait for intermittent cloud cover. Shooting in full sun is no good because the shadows are too harsh. Sometimes I have to settle for the shade. Having a truly white backdrop comes in handy when you have to use shade or even indoor lighting - see the next tip.

3. Post production: GIMP is a free program that works a lot like photoshop. In GIMP, click on color, then levels. In levels, I choose the white dropper which is on the right, then click a spot on the white background to tell it what is white. (Shooting in the shade, the white area may photograph grey. Shooting inside, white may appear yellowish.) This will smooth out the white background and make it pop. You can play with clicking different spots on the photo to get it how you want it.

I never thought to photograph animals this way. Strawberry wandered into the weed photoshoot. I will set up again and get some more shots of cats on white.  Everything looks so fresh on a white background.

Great White Background with Gimp for Etsy Sellers

I have had several people ask for my help lately with their Etsy listings. It has been a while since I posted any Etsy marketing tips here, so here are a few quickies that have to do with photos. Your product photography is the most important aspect of selling online. It is really 99% of the information the buyer needs to make a decision. There is a ton of information on the Etsy blog, under Seller Handbook, but I wanted to get straight to the point with the last several questions that have been asked of me.

The first thing you may want to do is photograph your items on a white background. For items that are small enough to sit on a chair, I use tag board from the dollar store to set up a cyc. See the photo below. The way the tagboard is set up with a curve makes it a cyc. I like tagboard better than fabric for small items because it is smoother. I set myself up where the lighting is best - usually outside or sometimes near a window. (I also have photo lighting I use in Winter. I sold successfully on Etsy for a couple of years before I splurged on lighting.) There was some haze over the sun this morning, but just barely - the light was pretty direct. Your ideal lighting would be an overcast day. Since my lighting was almost harsh, I added the light reflector - before I bought this, I used anything white (like a second piece of tag board held in place by a second person.) The reflector bounces the light back to the object from the shadow side which softens the shadow.

Make sure the sun is coming from the side, so you can take photos without casting a shadow on your subject. Photograph your item from all of the angles that a buyer would want to see. If I wanted to photograph something held in hands on this white background, I would either set the camera on a tripod and use the timer for my own hands, or get a second person to stand behind the chair and hold the item down in the white zone. Sometimes it is nice to have hands in a photo. Make sure they are clean unless maybe your item is for gardening.

Now here is the step by step I do with GIMP. GIMP is a free downloaded photo editing program that works a lot like photoshop. I have developed these steps to edit my photos for Etsy listings.

1. Do a rough crop to crop off any unnecessary edges. Crop to the height of the item you want to show, and allow extra on the width to crop later.
Cropping with GIMP - choose the crop tool from the tool box (circled in blue.) Click and drag to draw a rectangle around your item. Refine the rectangle by hovering near the edge until you see an arrow, then you can move the edge out or in. Move the entire rectangle by hovering in the center until you see the move symbol which is 4 arrows, then you can drag the rectangle around the image. When you are ready to make the crop, either single click in the center of the rectangle or hit the enter button on your keyboard.

2. Resize the image for best appearance on Etsy. Etsy likes images that are 1000 pixels wide and 800 pixels tall.  From the top menu on GIMP, choose Tools, Transform tools, and Scale.
When the scale pop up box opens (see the one below,) make sure the link between width and height is connected (just click on it it connect the links.) In the height box (the lower box,) type 800. When you click on the width box (the upper box,) you will see the corresponding width, probably something larger than 1000, depending on your crop. Click scale.

3. After you click scale, it will look like the screenshot below. The canvas is still the original size, so we want to crop this time to exactly 1000 wide by 800 tall. Choose the crop tool again from the tool box. Draw your rectangle around the photo.  After drawing roughly the rectangle I need, I find it easier to get the exact size by using the size dialogue inside the toolbox (see blue arrow.) I type 1000 and 800 into the spaces. Then I hover in the middle of the cropping rectangle and click and drag to position it. When I have the crop placed where I want it, I single click in the center of it, or I hit the enter key.

4. Make the white pop! This picture is already pretty bright, but the background appears a little grey. I want to make it pop as much as possible. From the top menu, choose Colors, and Levels.

There is a picture of the levels dialogue box below. I use the dropper that you see is highlighted in blue. That is the white sampler. The one to the left of it is a grey sampler and the one on the far left is the black sampler. Choose the white sampler dropper by clicking on it, then touch it to the best white on your photo and click. You will see the whole photo adjust. If you don't like how it came out, you can click reset instead of OK and try again. When you get it right, click OK. Even though this was already a bright photo, I think you can see how the background changed from a little grey to really white.

5. One more step before saving. In the top menu, click Image and Flatten Image.

6. Click File, Save As, and then you can file the photo where you want it and give it a name you like. I save as whatever.jpg

I hope this helps a few of you who want to improve your shop appearance for more sales!

Portrait vs. Landscape

Letters are written with portrait orientation. Magazines are pages and pages of portraits. People are usually vertical when we are interacting with them. "Why," many of us ask, does Etsy insist on landscape orientation for our product photos? It's a bit of a burden for those of us in fashion. It's an adjustment for anyone new to Etsy. We just don't think in terms of landscape. And it is hard work to bend your leggy model like gumby to fit into a wide frame. Why can't I just let her stand there and look beautiful?  I think the real answer is that they just weren't thinking when they designed the site layout. The fantasy answer is much more fun and useful for me.  Perhaps landscapes make us linger.

A landscape view is sexy.

With a landscape view, online shoppers see more of your shop on every page.

Our computer screens are landscape (this is probably the source of the real answer,) so we need to adjust and make the best of it.
This is how I crop and size my photos so there are no surprises when I see them in my Etsy shop:
If your subject is vertical and you want to capture the whole subject, your first option is to shoot in landscape, farther away than usual, and leave room on the sides for an interesting background.

The perfect sizing for Etsy is 1000 pixels wide by 800 pixels tall. If your original is too small for that, 750 wide by 600 tall also works.
If you do want to upload a vertical shot to Etsy, just know it will get cropped into these proportions - the width will remain untouched and the height will get cropped to width divided by 1.25. The crop will be centered. So I uploaded another version of the photo at the top of this article, and on Etsy it looks like this:

The bottom line is that if you want to make sales online, the most important thing is your presentation. You can have the most gorgeous product in person, but if your photos don't look as good as the real thing, they will not sell. I hope this article helps you frame every product shot like a work of art.

Lessons from Brandybuck Part 1

Rory Killilea
Originally uploaded by studiocherie

I have been needing this photo shoot since day 1 for the new BrandybuckClothiers shop. It was so good to finally get together with a great model and photographer to bring some life into the photos there. Just click on the photo to get to Flickr to see some of the more than 300 great shots we got. Rory and Shelby worked really well together.

My experiment with Brandybuck has taught me a few things.

Lesson one: A name that is easier to spell might have been better. Looking forward to Etsy letting us change names.

Lesson two: While dressform models seem to work well for vintage, there are very few clothing sellers who do well without live models. The bar has been set really high for photography on Etsy. So much so that I would advise people to get this part done before opening shop. I have to admit it has been a little disappointing to not have been featured in the Etsy Finds yet - since they do a fashion email about every other day. I am hoping Shelby's great modeling and Rory's photography can help with that.

Lesson three: Something I did do right because it costs a bundle to build an inventory: Make your first samples for yourself and your family. From there, your friends will see your product and if it is quality, they will buy from you. This gives you more samples to photograph and pays for more fabric. The white shirt Shelby is wearing in the photo above is for my friend Julia. The striped one is mine. The pink skirt is G's. The first tennis dress was going to be mine, but I need to get a little more ambitious about the gym before I wear one. As my friend Tera said, I can't get the butt I want by sitting on the butt I've got. (Pause typing to switch to exercise ball.)


Which leads me to lesson four: I can't get the success I want by sitting on the success I've got. Etsy runs on what is new, so I am always making something new. My newest pattern is not a bag. It is girls dresses. I am just tickled with how it turned out and how easy it is for people to make and enjoy. My gym bag did not do as well as I thought it would - sales wise. I love the bag. I love how I made the bag. I am proud of the pattern. I just did not have a super photo to sell it before. With this great photo, I am looking at it as sort of a relaunch. The Harry Chair slip cover was also launched with full size pattern pieces - you need to print with a 24" wide printer. And every time I wear that patchwork skirt I get a ton of compliments, so I am looking to put that down on paper soon. My list never gets shorter, but I can do hard things.
Speaking of Jessica Swift - the artist who made that next step print. Read about how she is launching one of her dream projects.
Inspiring!

She handed me my camera,

Travel Duffle in Alexander Henry
Originally uploaded by studiocherie

I looked down at it. A gigantic M was staring me in the face. She had put my camera on the manual setting! What was she thinking? When she said, I will show you guys how to work with your cameras, I thought no thanks. I am doing fine. Set it on automatic, point, shoot. If the colors or lighting aren't quite right, I can always touch it up in photoshop. To tell you the truth, I was intimidated by that M. I really wanted to just switch it back to auto, but when I looked at the preview screen and compared the auto to the manual and played with the manual settings, I was hooked. This shot was taken inside obviously. On the auto setting, my camera wanted to flash (and ruin the photo.) With the manual settings, I was able to take advantage of the light, even though my subject was seriously backlit. Doing it right to begin with is going to save me a lot of time in post shoot processing too. I only had to crop and resize it. Thank you Lauren! Check out her photography shop on Etsy. She's got 2 Jones Soda bottles to her credit and has just started to offer photo greeting cards - I bought a five pack of kittens. You never know when you might need to say it with a kitten.

Photo Styling 101

If you play that little game where you circle the differences in the pictures, you will probably learn what you can from this little post. Seriously, I did not do this on purpose. The shot on the left was my hero shot for about 18 hours. After I posted it, I went to bed and it hit me. If that is my "woodland whimsy" case, why did I photograph it with the cookbook? That one belongs with the gnomes. I was also bothered by the angle of the tablecloth. I was in complete denial about the wrinkles. The lighting for the shot on the left was done by bouncing some beautiful golden afternoon light from the window onto the subject with a reflector. At the time, I thought the lighting was great. For the second shot, I took my whole set up outside in the morning in the shade. As you can see, the ambient light in the shade is better than the best light inside. The reading glasses did darken up a bit when I took them outside, but I think they are not so dark that they look like sunglasses. Next time I will have a clear lens pair to use. Rory thinks the plaid is too busy and he would have styled it with a solid tablecloth. I like the warmth of it and the Autumnal sense of it, like brown leaves on the ground.
Oh, and there is still time to comment on my previous post. I think I will be giving a few prizes for the great comments there, so don't worry if you think your comment can't top something that someone else has already posted. You might pick up a great idea by reading them. I genuinely want to know what you are making for gifts this year.

Unmasking An Iconic American Image

The Associated Press is seeking compensation from artist Shepard Fairey for using their image, which they purchased from a photographer named Manny Garcia, and turning it into a poster for the Obama campaign. Capturing an iconic image of a person takes years of practice, patience, thousands of shots and some luck, being in the right place at the right time with the right conditions and the right equipment. Turning that shot into a stencil looking poster takes less than 5 minutes on Photoshop. Why didn't you ask permission?

Making Hay, While the Sun Shines

This post was inspired by this poster by Slide Sideways

Everyone I know in the Northern Hemisphere is ready for Spring. While we probably aren't making hay, we should be making pictures whenever we do get a sunny day (like yesterday here.) Sometimes it means running outside to shoot some photos, making other things on the "to-do" list wait (like the laundry.) In Spokane, our morning light tends to be a little blue for portraits, making people more attractive in the late afternoon (or maybe it was that glass of wine ;-) I am glad I caught the frost on the trees at sunset last week, I may never see that again. There is a group on flickr that is fun to look at, with extreme cold and heat photos.

Frosted branches at sunset by me, Attractive person on a late afternoon hike also by me ;-)

Making Posters - Valentines Idea Number 3

Since Valentine's and the 100th day of school tend to go together, it's fun to combine the themes. This poster of my younger son that we made for his 100 days of kindergarten project still brightens our hallway three years later.

What Daddy wouldn't turn to mush at receiving a poster of himself with his daughter for Valentine's day? This poster is about 20" long and 15" wide. It was printed on letter sized paper, the white edges were cut off, then the pieces were arranged and taped with double stick tape to a sturdy piece of tag board. For Caleb's poster above we left the white borders on and covered the poster with 100 kisses made from a rubber stamp and red ink. Here is the step by step instructions for printing your own valentine poster.

Using Microsoft Publisher 2007, the "how to" is easy.

1. Open Publisher and click on >blank page sizes>posters>22x17 (or whatever size you want.)

2.>Insert>Picture>from file>(I sized my pictures on photoshop to 20x16, and that is the file I used)

3.>File>Print Set up. Choose "Tiled" Choose paper size 8.5x11 "Portrait" Set the horizontal and vertical overlaps for .25

4. Once that is set. Check the print preview to see how it will tile print.
















Voila, now you are ready for a Happy Valentines Day and only 80 more days of school 'till Summer vacation!

Am I worthy?

We see versions of this question posted daily on the Etsy forums. Are my photos treasury worthy? Why am I never picked for the Etsy front page? Answers abound in the form of photography tips and tricks, and networking advice. In my opinion, what most of us are missing in our own photography is the vital element of perspective. How do your photos look side by side with those that are appearing on the font page? Using Etsy's poster sketch, you can easily check for yourself and, in some cases make adjustments to your existing photos to make them work.

First, go to poster sketch. (I saved mine to my desktop by clicking "page" and "save as" in my browser bar, now I can click on it anytime and get to work.) Load the sketch with the item(s) of yours that you want to test along with items you have seen on the front page. I started with the photo above because I thought it was so great and I could not understand how so many front pages featuring these colors could get posted and not one of them feature my bag. What I discovered was that while my bag was photogenic, showing it in its entirety was keeping it out of treasuries. There was too much white space and the photo lost all of its punch. After cropping the photo closer, it becomes treasury worthy. Here is a screen shot of the finished sketch. My bag is in the lower left corner.


list of sellers in this sketch in order of appearance: outoftheflames, randomscraps, humbledaisyhandmade, ragnazidnar, livepoultry, petalandpink, thepaintedlily, rachel323, khphillips, debbyaremdesigns, patapri, studiocherie, studiocherie, sagegold, rachel323, elephannie

Using this method, I have discovered that some of my bags need a fresh photo shoot. The last photo in the third row of the poster above is a detail shot of a cute bag, but I am afraid that the fabric is a lot better in person than it is in the photos. This shot might work a little better, but I am afraid it is still too washed out and small for the front page. The door and the brick wall is more interesting than the bag. Can you be brutally honest with yourself? I have to accept that this bag is not front page material and never will be.

Here is another sketch I put together with one of my bags in each row. Each row could be the start of a complete treasury. I think they hold up to scrutiny along side the most popular sellers. So now I don't have to ask if my photos are treasury worthy, I can check them myself.

sellers appearing in this sketch in order of appearance: rachel323, studiocherie, larimeloom, LittleSparrowNest, studiocherie, makool, sherrytruitt, redrubyrose, totusmel, dillondesigns, studiocherie, maryandangelika, paintedmetal, studiocherie, livepoultry, imagesofbeauty