On my desk... week 2

This week I have been trying to get my Christmas cards listed in my online shops. A long overdue task that I had aimed to complete by the middle of September. Why is it when you finally have time to take photos the weather becomes so dull?! Up until yesterday I've had the lights on inside all day, so it really wasn't bright enough to take clear photos. But today I woke up to find the sun shining, so I had barely finished breakfast when I got my camera out, just in case it disappeared!

I don't have any fancy set up for taking photos. Where I take them depends on what time of day it is. In the afternoons my craft room gets the light and the windowsill in there is perfect. But since this was early, the lightest room was our bedroom. So I set up on top of our laundry basket! I just use a piece of white card for the base, to capture the shadows, and don't worry about the rest of the background as I find it's easiest to just cut that out in photoshop afterwards.

So the rest of the morning was spent photo editing. Not my favourite job! I've learnt quite a lot about taking photos though and they have improved enormously over the last 2 years (you can read more about that journey and what I learnt in my post about photographing handmade items).

The photos look so much better once they have a nice white background. I'm amazed what you can do in photoshop to turn a rather poor photo into a product image that looks ok in the shop.

I hope to have most of my Christmas cards in my folksy and etsy shops by Monday. So if you're the organised type you can get shopping!