Every now and then I get asked about how I take photos of my camera straps for my etsy shop. So, I figured since I have this nifty new blog, and we’re all trying to learn something here {okay, maybe not all of us, some of you guys are just awesome} I thought I would give you a little behind the scenes peek at how I capture and edit my photos to post in my shop.
Let me start by saying that after selling on etsy for over 4 years, I’ve tried a ton of different methods. Before I knew anything about anything, I was taking photos with a flash, then moved on to a home made light box that never really worked wonders for me and finally landed on my current method of shooting my straps in natural light. It took a lot of trial and error to finally find what works for me and achieve the feel that I want for my shop. So, even though my method or set up may not work for you, my hope is that it will at least get your gears turning and move you toward finding what works best for you.
Alright, let’s get to it!
I start off by setting up my rickety old barn stool that the hubs and I inherited with our first house. Score! It has a convenient split in the wood where I slip in a piece of white poster board to act as my background. I place my set up directly in front of my south facing sliding glass door, making sure that the sun isn’t shining directly in the window to avoid harsh shadows. I leave just enough space between the door and the stool so I can squeeze in and get my lens *just* far enough away to get everything in the frame. This allows me to take advantage of as much natural light as possible.
I pin my strap into the coil shape so it stays just how I want it, and I’m ready to start shooting
Here is what I get straight out of the camera. Now on to editing – I use Photoshop CS5
The first thing I do is crop my image to be perfectly square so nothing gets cut off on etsy. You can either constrain your proportions to a square like I did here, or hold down shift as you drag your crop box to get the same results. Either method works fine. Now is a great time to level things as well – something I obviously didn’t do here. 
Next I bump up the brightness a bit, depending on the lighting conditions. This time I bumped it up 25 points.
Last, but not least, I adjust the levels. I always adjust the white balance first, which can be done two ways. You can either select the white eye dropper, like I’ve done here and click on the part of the photo that should be white – in my case, the background. If this method doesn’t give you desirable results, you can also use the little arrow on the bottom right of the histogram and slide it to the left until you get the results you want. I usually slide it just to the bottom of the hill – you don’t want t over do it or your colors will start to look off. The eye dropper method worked pretty well for me this time, so I stuck with that. However, the orange in this fabric isn’t quite as vibrant as the photo suggests at this point, so now we’ll move on the adjusting the highlights.
To tone down the orange a bit and brighten up my white background even more, I slide the middle {gray} arrow to the left a bit as shown below. Notice the change in the blue highlighted number and the position of the arrow as compared to the photo above. Notice how much better the orange looks now? These colors are much more true to the colors on the fabric.
That’s it! Pretty painless right? Here is a side by side so you can see how drastically these little tweaks changed our photo
Huge improvement over the original sooc shot, right? And so easy! Just a few more shots in different positions and a close up or two and we’re ready to post on etsy!
Let me know if anything isn’t clear and I’ll do me best to explain.
I’d also love to hear if you try this out on your own. Feel free to link up in the comments with your edited photos.
