Product photography is all about illusion. Have you heard about all the crazy things food stylists do during a photo shoot? We're talkin' ice cream made of mashed potatoes, milk that's really glue, and lots more truly weird food substitutes like motor oil & cotton balls. Well, thankfully I don't have to worry myself with that kind of stuff, but we do have an illusion of sorts going on in our Snuggle Herd photo shoots. Check out the setup:
This is Patrick's office. He sets our backdrop (2 drawers from my nightstand) up on his desk. For a cute clothesline look, we hang the clothing on a satin ribbon, which is clipped to the top of the drawers. A piece of brown fabric on the desk and lots of clamp-on lights round out the scene. 
Thanks to the magic of PhotoShop - some major cropping, a little adjustment of the levels & color balance - we get a pretty nice lookin' photo out of all of this! Funny, huh? We're living proof that you can take decent photos of your work all by yourself. There is a lot of help available online, too. This Storque article on feature-friendly photos is a good place to start. 
It's also worth it to take some time to learn how to use your photo-editing software to brighten your photos if you're lighting is less-than-perfect (as ours certainly is!). This very helpful article on the Switchboards talks about editing in PhotoShop and building your own light box in a Rubbermaid container. I tried that for myself & it worked pretty well, but most of my products are too big to use with it. It might work out well for you if your work is small, like jewelry.
Hope you've found some interesting information here. If you have any other good photography tricks or resources, please leave them in the comments! p.s. All of these new baby blue items will be listed in the Snuggle Herd Etsy shop very soon!
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