I have had a couple requests to “share my secrets” on photographing my projects. Let me preface this by saying that I am not a professional photographer… just a girl who is interested in learning more about photography (and desperately hoping for a DSLR… *sigh*).

So, THE single most important thing about photographing your projects is LIGHT. Not that nasty artificial light, but NATURAL LIGHT. I always photograph my projects during the day so I can use natural light. I have a lot of windows in my house… so I use that to my advantage. I always photograph next to a window on the north side of my house. This lets the sunlight in without the sun pouring directly into your window (because the sun is shining on the south side of my house). At my last apartment, there were hardly any windows so I actually photographed outside on a picnic table in open shade…lol. Oh, and TURN THE FLASH OFF!!!! My camera’s on-board flash is awful and makes for harsh, ugly shadows and blown out images.

Next, try to make the presentation attractive. Move any ugly/distracting items out of the way. I like to photograph my projects against a white background so it doesn’t detract from the image. I just buy a big white poster board and use that as my backdrop… easy and cheap.

Now get your camera out! You do NOT need some expensive, fancy camera… you just need to know how to use your own camera! I don’t have a DSLR, so I can only help out the folks with P&S cameras. I have a Canon Powershot A570IS… and it has been an awesome little camera for me and I’ve learned so much about photography just by using this little point-and-shoot camera. What I love about it is that it has the manual modes on it too… so I can learn about aperture and shutterspeed and all that jazz. But usually for my hybrid projects, I shoot on the Portrait setting (you know, the little symbol on your camera that looks like a person’s head) and then set it on Macro mode (on most P&S cameras it’s denoted by a little flower icon). Macro mode is what will let you get up close to your subject and will also help you get the subject in focus and blur the background…. like so:

One of the annoying things about a P&S camera is you can’t really CHOOSE where the camera will focus… so I get close to the detail I’m photographing, slightly depress the shutter release and my camera shows a red box around what it’s focused on… if it’s focusing on the wrong spot (like something in the background instead of the detail I really want to capture) then I change positions slightly and see where it decided to focus the next time… once it focuses on the detail I want, I press the shutter release all the way and take the picture!

Play with angles… sometimes a straight-on pic is what you need, but when you get up close and you’re capturing the little details, don’t be afraid to tilt your camera a little to add a little interest to the image.

I always do a little editing in PS when I upload my pics… usually boost the color and brighten the image a bit.

So, I think that’s it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 8:01 am and is filed under Hybrid crafts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.