Photographing Your Cards (Part 1)

I've put this tutorial together from various online sources and a few little tricks I've learnt along the way, on capturing the best side of your cards.

Please note I'm no professional photographer - so laymen terms will frequent here, I hope you don't mind! If you're a scrapbooker I have a similar short tutorial for you too. Click here to check it out.

Some of the same old rules first:

Rule 1: Natural Light!
Why would you take a photo of your creation in the dark? We want to see all those beautiful colours, the textures - not shadows! You don't need to go out and buy yourself a light box or a snazzy camera - let the light do the work for you.

Great light is just a small step away - like the shade of your back patio for example. Direct light beaming down on your creation is a No-No - it will wash it out, create ugly shadows - but shade is perfect.

Other light tips:

• Don't use your flash - PLEASE! Just like direct natural light beaming down on your creation, it will wash a lot of your detail out or create ugly shadows. Trust me, I've been down this path many, many times. If it's night time, just wait until the morning to take your photo, it will be worth the wait.
• Use the MACRO setting - especially with cards. This is usually the little flower on your settings dial. All camera's are different - so play with the different settings.

Rule 2: Take LOTS of photo's
Everyone loves eye candy. There's nothing better than seeing all the little details you (and we!) love about your creations up close. That's why!

Rule 3: Dress it Up & Fill The Frame
It doesn't matter what kind of camera you have - it could be a $100 point and shoot to a $1000+ DSLR, if you fill the frame with your card — get close enough so the card fills at least 75% of the viewfinder — you'll make the best use of whatever camera you have.

Dressing It Up
Got patterned paper? Chances are, you have a few sheets stashed away somewhere (hee!). Again, you don't need a light tent - a couple of sheets of 12x12 white card stock and you're half way to having a fail-proof, basic backdrop for your creation.

I always keep two Whisper White 12x12 sheets in a protective case at all times (see below) - just in case. It's a great 'grab bag' for when I need to run out the back and shoot a picture quickly.

Because I used Stampin' Up!s Haiku patterned paper on my card, I've grabbed some contrasting DSP from the same range for an alternative backdrop. Have a play when you're shooting your creations! Sometimes white works well, but for this particular card I felt it needed a little more of a kick.

All I have done here for my 'temporary photo shoot' space, is clear away some paint tins and copper piping on a table, laid one sheet down flat (on protector sheet - it's grubby out there ATM), the other sheet is propped up against any flat, sturdy surface (in my case, an old mirror). I placed my card on the bottom page, squatted down so I was level with the card and took my photo.

White Backdrop.
(Please excuse my messy back patio - we never seem to stop fixing the house up).

Photo after cropping & editing. (As my 6 year old would say: Boring!)Now, if you want to get really fancy, you only need one sheet of white 12x12 and a piece of pretty patterned paper and you can do something like this:

This is the exact setup I used for the photo at the start of this post.

Primitive, but it works for me.Do you see how my card is further away from the patterned paper sheet this time? This is so when I focus on the card (macro setting preferably) the background is out of focus, thus the main focus being on the card.

Rule 4: Focus

Nothing can save it if you don't get the image in focus. This is where the MACRO setting comes in mighty handy - it's the 'flower' setting on most cameras.

Rule 5: A Little Editing Goes a Long Way
The legendary Karen Giron directed me towards a software program called GIMP, it's really easy to navigate through (well, if I can use it I'm sure anyone can figure it out) and you can download it for free here.

Please check out the end of this post for a basic way to fix up your photo's with GIMP.

Thanks for tuning in, if you have any additional tips on photography, please share.

Photographing Your Layouts (Part 1)

There are but a few simple rules to take better photo's of your cards and layouts. Today I'll focus on scrapbooking layouts, I promise to do a tutorial soon on card photo's... please note I'm no professional photographer - so laymen terms will frequent here, I hope you don't mind!

Rule 1: Natural Light!
Why would you take a photo of your creation in the dark? We want to see all those beautiful colours, the textures - not shadows! You don't need to go out and buy yourself one of these to get that effect either (although there is one on my wish list!) or a snazzy camera...
Great light is just a small step away - like the shade of your back patio for example. Direct light beaming down on your creation will wash it out - but shade is perfect. Give it a try, you'll be amazed what a difference it can make.

Other light tips:

• Don't use your flash - just like direct natural light beaming down on your creation, it will wash a lot of your detail out or create ugly shadows. Trust me, I've been down this path many, many times. If it's night time, just wait until the morning to take your photo, it will be worth the wait.
• Use the MACRO setting - this is usually the little flower on your settings dial. All camera's are different - so play with the different settings.
  

Rule 2: Make sure it's flat
Whether you're (gently) attaching your LO to a wall with blue-tack or lying it on the ground to photograph from above (see extreme example below) make sure your layout is on a flat surface, and parallel to your camera lens.

When you are looking through your view-finder ensure your layout is parallel to the top, bottom and sides of you view finder. This takes a bit of practice, but I can assure you it will make all the difference to how your layout looks in the end (less distortion - you know when layouts look lopsided?), and helps the editing process a little too.

Rule 3: Take LOTS of photo's
Everyone loves eye candy. There's nothing better than seeing little details you love about your creation up close. That's why!


Rule 4: A Little Editing Goes a Long Way
The legendary Karen Giron directed me towards a software program called GIMP, it's really easy to navigate through (well, if I can use it I'm sure anyone can figure it out) and you can download it for free here.

Where was I going with that? Well, it's what I use to edit my photo's... and I will be sharing one tip today that certainly helps 99% of my photo problems!

Here's where you'll find two key "helpers" in GIMP (red boxes):



This is really easy - you basically slide the bars up and down until you're happy with the result - now go play! You'll see what I mean.

This is what my LO looks like after I've cropped and upped the brightness : (moved the tab to the right) - eeek!
Because I've edited a gazillion pics in the past I happen to know "Contrast" will make this all better...

This is my layout after Contrast has been moved slightly less to the right than Brightness, so now I've changed the Brightness and the Contrast on my original picture.
Because the background paper was white, this is what I'm aiming to achieve here, which in theory will make the rest of my layout colours pretty accurate.

And there you have it, the first part of Photographing Your Layouts. If you have any questions PLEASE let me know by emailing me at just-add-ink@hotmail.com or leave me a comment and I'll try to help you out.

Until next time,