Let me start off by saying I’m a very amateur photographer. But that doesn’t stop me. I just keep trying to get it right!!

In 1997, I bought a Canon Rebel 35mm camera – this is way before the age of digital photography (at least as far as I was concerned). I took pictures all the time, and spent a fortune to have the film processed, with only 1 or 2 out of the shots being good enough to print a picture of. At that time, I had a small craft business, and I wanted to take good pictures of what I made to sell.

Then in 2001, I bit the bullet and opted to get a top of the line digital camera – an Olympus C-3030. It did everything that my Canon could do, but it was so neat – because I could take pictures all day long, delete what I didn’t like, copy the images that I did, that I could use for my business. The Olympus camera that I have has a neat setting called Macro – you can turn it on – the icon is a flower – and it allows you to get close to the item, to take a picture that isn’t blurry. Works great. I always put the camera on a tripod, as it gets kind of heavy!

Last year, I bought a photo studio kit – this is a stand up item, with lights that allows you to photograph items without all the shadows and such that you might have, just taking a picture in a room with a ceiling light. I use it to take pictures of hats that I crochet for my handmade shop. Of course, I will probably retake some of those pictures too, as I am always learning about how to take better pictures.

This year, my daughter and I went on vacation to Jamaica. I didn’t want to take my Olympus camera on the vacation – so I bought a Canon Power Shot – a much smaller camera, light weight, does the macro automatically – it worked really well on vacation. When I came back from vacation, I started using it to take pictures of items that I wanted to sell, and they come out, sometimes not so good, other times, good.

Yesterday I finished a crocheted hat that is mostly white. The small styrofoam head I have to taking pictures in the photo studio is white, so a white hat wouldn’t show up very good. The only other one I have is a mannequin head from Crochet Gal which is the one I use to take pictures of earrings.

So what to do, to use the photo box and this mannequin head – which is way taller than the inside of the box.

Ah Ha! I used a couple of storage containers, one holding up either side of the photo studio and placed the mannequin head inside and took pictures. Looks funky, but hey, it works!

Because the storage containers show up in the corners of the pictures I’m trying to take I’ll have to cover them! And I’m still trying to figure out the lighting as you can see.

I’ve always heard that taking pictures outside is the best way to have them come out looking good. And of course some of them I can do that way – such as this picture I took of hubby wearing one of my new crocheted hats for men.

Taking pictures outside with this small camera has become an obsession, (as if I didn’t have enough obsessions already) and I’ve started creating a series of photograph trading cards (called ACEO)

I know that I still have a lot to learn, and patience is one of the things I need to work on. I’ll keep trying!

Sandi