Look What Your Camera Did! Getting the Best Pictures: Part 1

Hello all, welcome! This tutorial is part of the Sorta Sewing Summit. You can get a class schedule for a whole bunch of different skills and tutorials over on Distant Pickles.

Lets jump right in. The number one most important thing that most people don't know about their camera is that it is made to make your pictures middle grey and that is (mostly) bad! What's middle grey? If you mix equal parts white and black you get middle grey.

This is great if you have a black and white quilt, object or photo scene. If you don't, you'll need to make some adjustments to your photo or digital file. You can do this in your camera before you take the picture or later with editing on your computer. If you do it in your camera and upload your file it'll already look just right and you'll be good to go.

How do we do that? On most digital cameras there is a button on the outside of the camera that looks something like this:

A little box or sign with a plus/minus on it. Your camera may have it on the back or top or it can be listed in your menu usually under "exposure compensation". You can keep your camera on auto while you use this feature which keeps things fast and easy. On this camera auto looks like a mini green camera.

This is what it may look like on your viewfinder once you push that button:

Leaving your camera on auto without any adjustments may make the pic turn out like the one on the left. Greyish brown = not great.

So many people leave their photos looking like this when it's an easy fix. Here's how: you adjust your exposure compensation by moving your indicator (it's the yellow line on this screen) to the + positive side.

See our yellow line has moved up and now it says +1.0 ? That makes the picture brighter. This means plus one stop, or a bunch more light, is being recorded so your creation's not grey. Then the camera and your eye see the same thing, like the apron on the right.

We can also adjust or edit the grey picture later on the computer. Since that is picture heavy it's in the 2nd half of the photo guide.

Presentation

Whether you'll be posting your pictures on your blog, Etsy or printing for yourself you'll want to be aware of presentation. If you'll be selling your things on a site like Etsy you want a clean non-busy background, preferably white, so that we are only looking at what you made, not what you have in the background. 

Practice Time:

Set your creation on a busy piece of fabric and snap a picture. Can you see your creation easily? Are you looking at the fabric rather than what you made? If this is seen as a tiny thumbnail on a selling site will people be able to tell what it is? Here are a few different backgrounds:

The orange background isn't bad and neither is the Sketch/grey one. The bottom left Masaai Mara makes your eye bounce around looking at blue and green and white and bowl. Too distracting. I just want people to see what I painted.  I might use the orange and grey ones on a blog or for personal prints. They do not work for for a site like Etsy as it is difficult to see just the bowl and tell what it is quickly. People only spend about a second looking at your picture. If they can't tell what it is, and that it's good quality, they will skip over it. You want people looking at what you made not trying to figure out what's behind it. 

So what is the paper/cardstock/foam core for? As a reflector! You don't need super fancy expensive reflectors when almost anything white will do. Here's one with (top) and one without (bottom):

Light from the window is coming from the right. With a paper reflector to the left of bowl the light bounces off the reflector and fills in the shadow. This makes the whole picture lighter or easier to see. Our fancy shmancy reflectors, otherwise know as a white paper/cardstock/foamcore/white sheet, can be held up by your hand or a highly technical reflector-holder like this pillow:

Next up is a walk through editing in Part Two. 

Look What Your Camera Did! Getting the Best Pictures: Part 2

Welcome! If you didn't get Part 1 you'll want to pop back up and read it first

Editing to Get Your Best Picture

Let's get a picture that you've taken that needs a little help looking better. We'll do some editing on a site called Picmonkey. Why? It's easy, it's fast, it's free and you can apply the same ideas to other editing programs.  I have no association with them and found them through a friend. Here's one of their seasonal home pages:

If you're blessed to have Adobe Photoshop you'll recognize some of the same principles at work.

Upper left: homepage of Picmonkey. Upper right: how to start! Click on "Edit a Photo"
Lower left: your picture uploaded. Lower right: clicked on "Rotate" so I can fix the leaning apron:

Now (that my picture is straight) you can click on Exposure to play around with how bright the image is, the shadows/highlights and things like that. It's the quick n dirty way to combat the grey of your "auto" photo and is available on most editing software. But don't settle for that! With a couple more seconds of skills you can get amazing results.

What we want to do is learn about curves. Don't worry, it's not hard. Click on the beaker looking icon and you'll get a bunch of "effects" to use and advanced editing. You'll want to click on curves. You'll get a box with a diagonal line, bottom left to top right. Click on that line and drag it up and left. This is usually all you'll need to make your picture brighter, more accurate and override the "grey" that your camera thinks you want:

If you look next to "Channel" there is an RGB (red/green/blue) and that adjusts the whole image or light/darkness of the picture. You can change this channel to blue and it'll adjust the blue vs. yellow tint in your picture. This is handy if you are taking pictures inside as most household non-LED/halogen lights are yellow colored. You can put channel on red and this adjusts the red/cyan or red and greenish/blue. The green channel adjusts green/magenta. 

Play around with these color channels and see what they do to your picture. If you like how your picture is looking just lick "Apply". If you change your mind you can undo what you just did by clicking the arrow buttons above your picture. Here's a better picture of the curves screen:

You can make your picture sharper, make it Black and White or other things. You'll want to go easy on the "effects" like sepia tone or black edges as you want people looking at your awesome stuff and not saying, "Oh, cool sepia!". Once you are happy with how your picture looks you'll want to save it. Above your picture you click on save and you can select where to save your picture and how big you want your file (or what quality you'd like). There is also an option to share on different social media sites.

Curves are used in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and if you learn about them you'll have the master Jedi skills of photo editing.

Lighting and Setting-Almost done!

I hope you've heard before that natural light is best when taking pictures and it's true. If you can get your creation in your frame (what you can see) in the camera while it's lying on the floor or on a sheet under a shady tree that's great. That may mean you have to use a step stool, a ladder, or climb up in the tree to get high enough to capture the whole thing. If you can hang your quilt or creation in front of you it'll be much easier to take a picture and your quilt hang straight. Hangers, clips, hardware store clamps, extra people standing around-they all work. Hang from a shower curtain/rod or drape, use your porch christmas light hooks, your rain gutters. Those are all ok too :) 

Cropping is your friend. That apron picture we've been working on? This is what was sitting just outside the frame in the picture on the right, otherwise known as visual junk. On the left another apron is hung on a drapery rod with the rest of the closet and room cropped out.

If you are trying to show off the quilting or texture of something you may want to photograph it right next to a window (but not in direct light or sunlight on it). You can always use your reflector paper to bounce more light into the shadow area. You want to have it right next to the window as the light is coming in sideways and will highlight the texture.

Above is a white whole cloth quilt with Minky on the back. With side light the bumps and quilting show up. 

A note for winter shooting: Many of us have snow or wet during winter and can't go outside for all that nice natural light. Look into your camera's manual or menu for "Manual" mode or Shutter Priority. You can make your camera take your picture for a longer time which gets more light on the sensor/film. Pull out your trusty tripod for this. A real one works or a bean bag, ladder, pillow, stool or any stationary object combined with the self-timer will keep your camera still while it's taking the picture. 

Staging: let's dress up your pics. We fix ourselves up, why not our pictures? Put things in your purse to fill it out like a notebook/scarf/extra fabric. That way we see how you might use it and it won't be saggy. Have pins in your pincushion or put your pillowcases on pillows on a bed:

See how the Remember September Pillowcases look right at home with our Log Cabin find?

Just in case you didn't get enough about pictures, here are a two other tutorials that are pretty superb: Bijou Lovely  who has 10 Tips for Photos and A Lemon Squeezy Home has a tutorial for fast, easy and good looking backgrounds for pictures.

It's been fun and long, eh? If you have questions feel free to ask and I'll get back to you. You can comment here or email me. If you missed Part 1 you'll want to go back! Thanks for coming and remember to head on back to Distant Pickles for the full class schedule.

"grey"

Photography Class for The Sorta Sewing Summit

Look What Your Camera Did! : A Guide to Getting Your Best Pictures

Hi, I'm Jennifer aka Jeifner. I've been a photographer for more than 16 years now (I even went to university to get my degree in it to my parents delight). I'd love to share with you some tips and knowledge to help you be able to photograph your creations and make them look as amazing as they are. This blog is where I share my sewing, quilting, crocheting and other creations so I figured it'd be perfect to host the class. 

Our photography class will be divided into four parts. We'll focus, haha, mainly on your camera and editing then polish off the class with a touch of your creation presentation and lighting. Here's an example of quick photo editing:

It doesn't matter if you've got those big papa professional cameras, a point and shoot or your iPhone. We'll be working with your camera to better understand it's features and how to get it to do what you want. This includes the number one thing you need to know about your camera whether it was made 40 years ago or today. 

Then once we've got pictures we'll want to edit them to maximize their beauty and showcase your creations. Setting and staging can be the finishing touches to make your pictures look put-together and professional and it's easy! We'll round out our class with a bit of lighting practice and knowhow. 

What you'll need:

Camera

Computer 

A Small Creation- a mug-rug, mini, pincushion, pile of fabric, folded quilt. It's just easier to work small when learning new skills then apply it to your king size quilt or crocheted full wall covering. 

A Photograph- you'll need a digital file. You may want to have a picture you've already taken that we can use to edit or you can take one of your creation while we learn about your camera. 

White piece of paper/card stock/foam core

A piece of busy/loud fabric, a neutral one and a white one (a sheet works).