Like most small business owners, we tend to do everything ourselves. Designing, Production, Bookkeeping, administration, cleaner and sometimes even our own product photography. Thats great if you have a fully equipped photo studio but what if you don’t… you can still take great pictures with what you have.

Kate Ramsey of Fabulous Felt asked me recently to help tweak how she was taking her images for her etsy shop (please check it out, i love her scarves so much!). She was taking great shots but they weren’t representing her gorgeous colours properly and the clean up in photoshop was taking a little longer than she wanted.

She already had a great set up, with white backdrop and 2 contsant light sources, both pointing to the product. This creates an even flat light with a little shadow behind the mannequin.

the original light set up

We changed the set up be moving the mannequin forward, Light 1 pointing to the backdrop to eliminate shadows and Light 2 closer to the camera to cool down the “hot” light. We also made a few changes on her camera settings to make the images sharper and bring out the true colours of her scarves. This will also make the  photoshop is a lot quicker.

Even if you have a point and shoot camera, there are a few changes you can make to improve the quality of your images, location, light reflection and sharpness. Give me a buzz to have a chat about doing it yourself 😀

Kate’s final product image