Behind the Scenes: Make-shift Photography Studio

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!

Photo Styling... Which Do You Prefer?

This pic of Zandra was featured on the tchotchkes blog today, in a great post called "Storytelling Photography." Soulyluna, the writer of this blog, has a wonderful biz called Treebottom Wool. They make the cutest little kids' clothes, using "luxuriously soft cashmere or other itch and scratch-free wool made from re-purposed sweaters." They also "fancy unusual applique designs, vintage buttons and collecting pockets." Their stuff is really cute & unique, and so full of imagination.


When a fellow whimsical-stuff-maker like Soulyluna writes nice things about my photos, it's very flattering of course. But it's also been a little unsettling... Self-doubt is creepin' in & it's got me wondering about the new direction I've taken with my photos. Patrick's been re-shooting all of the toy pics so we can phase out these old ones with the painted background scenery. Personally, I like the new photos' look so much better than the old ones. I do like the old photos, especially how the backdrop is not the natural setting for these animals (giraffes & elephants in a grassy field among trees whose trunks looks suspiciously like oaks). In my mind, the imaginative setting of the pics sets the tone that these are toys meant to inspire creative thinking. And I guess that's why Soulyluna likes them, too.



But there was always something that annoyed me about those photos: the setting looked too unnatural, as in not organic or healthy. The watercolors I used to paint the grass in the backdrop ended up looking too blue (which made it really difficult to achieve the right color balance in the pics) & the shiny Astroturf used as a stand-in for grass is as unnatural as you can get.

Those old photos didn't seem to hit the right note for The Snuggle Herd, which prides itself on being earth-friendly. I wanted photos that played that aspect up, with a warm, inviting look to them that amplified the animals' soft & cuddly-ness (as opposed to the strange, fake look the painted background & Astroturf have that seems to say "you better keep your distance").




So we decided to use softer, natural materials like wood (drawers from my night stand) and fabric with warmer tones. As an added bonus, this modular drawer setup makes it much easier for us to accommodate products of different sizes and different display situations. We can hang the onesies, lean things up against the drawers, etc., while still keeping a consistent look to the photos, which I think is really important for branding our shop.



But now I'm totally curious, which do you prefer?