Lighting Lighting Lighting

This is my current lighting setup.  Two hardware lights and a lamp, all equipped with sunlight bulbs.  I covered the openings of the two hardware lamps with photocopier paper (two sheets per lamp) and taped two sheets around the lamp to diffuse the light and eliminate glare spots.

I laid more photocopier paper on the bottom.  That is what the beads will sit upon as they are being photographed. For pottery I will move the lamps slightly back and use graduated background paper I recently purchased from B&H Photo..

This is probably about as inexpensive as it can get.  I have struggled with lighting and photography for as long as I have had my two Etsy stores.  I think taking pictures it is just as hard (or harder) than creating beads and pottery.

That's where being a member of a team on Etsy is so amazing.  I am a member of two teams, The Etsy Mud Team and the Beads Of Clay team.  All the members are incredibly helpful.   Most have photography down to a fine art and are extremely willing to look at other's setups and make helpful suggestions.  The mentoring is fantastic! They have helped me through some really bad photo setups. Looking through my first sales in my shops, it is easy to see where I started.  It's difficult to train the eye as to what is a good photo from a bad photo when you are not sure what a good photo is supposed to look like.  I have been looking in design magazines to get a better idea and I have realized that the photos I've taken the last couple of years are nice and bright, but the lighting is harsh and glaring.  The goal is to take a picture that accurately represents the item, but make it pleasing to the eye.  That leads to lots of questions.  Is it better to take photos inside or outside?  How much lighting is too much and how little is too little?  How should a shot be framed/cropped?  How important is perspective?  What is a good graphic's program? What is a good camera?  Flash? No flash?  First things first: lighting.

For myself, I have had to decide whether or not I want to take photos inside or outside.  I would prefer to take photos outside, but it can be cloudy for days on end in the winter. In the summer, I don't have proper shade.  It would take just as long to set up and take down outside as it would inside.  Plus, I seem to have the same problem with glare outside as I do inside (Example: Third photo on my blog post here). 


And after the picture is taken, it must be processed. In the past, I have utilized many programs for processing the photos.  I have a very old edition of Paintshop Pro.  I have installed Gimp (freeware) as well as Picasa (freeware). For a while I was importing the photos with Picasa, processing the cropping and brightness with Paintshop Pro, then adjusting the contrast with Gimp.  Currently I'm using Picasa exclusively.  My next article will be about that.