Saturday, April 4, 2009

Birdy pictures

So yesterday I devised this background for the birds (to use for the Etsy site) and Terry spent hours taking pictures and putting them through editing software and I just wasn't liking anything. Then we looked at some other Etsy sellers' pictures, and it seems like everybody is either using a white background or some other setting that looks very unprofessional. I realized that what I wanted was natural lighting, so this morning I got up and shot these pix on my camera.



First of all, this picture is just to show you the stage. The base is a green door mat and the background is a piece of cardboard that I cut like a display board, and I taped that cloud fabric to it.

But I wanted a tighter shot, so I started taking the picture this way:






Now, the funny thing about it is that I had just gotten through taking all 15 birds' pictures when Terry stepped in and took the picture of the last bird on his camera - which was lucky because the picture I took wound up being blurry, so he saved the day on that one. We had to rush because the light was going to change and become not good. And also it's funny because I used my vastly inferior camera to take these shots, but I'm finally liking them. I think the soft morning light is really nice and having them sitting on the white doll chair is really cute.

But we are going to shoot some other pix in different settings, too. I may just use some of the white background group shots, because they work really well, too. For instance:



I know it's really hard to get my camera to focus in such a tight shot, even in the macro setting. But I'm not sure it matters, if the bird I'm featuring is in focus.

We also talked about taking pictures of the birds in a bonsai garden. That could work, but we'll have to be very careful about keeping them clean. And we need to do it in the next couple of days, too, since I am motivated to get this site up by next weekend.

But you can see how the time just flies and there's things you want to get just right before posting.

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