Sarah Franklin - our first official Photography Advisor!

[iCraft Admin]

Good news!
We are happy to introduce our first official Photography Advisor for “Sellers’ Bootcamp” program.

Sarah Franklin, also known to some of you as Eyeshoot Photography https://icraftgifts.com/eyeshoot-photography , agreed to provide helpful tips and answer questions related to photography from our Creators who need help.

Sarah lives in Manchester, UK and works from home.

“I've been following a creative path since school which led me to an Art Foundation course and then a BA Degree in Graphic Design where I also dabbled in product design, glass design and photography. I started to take photos with my first camera when I was about six. I’ve since graduated to a rather lovely Nikon D300, I also have a rather tetchy Holga, a Lomo and an elegant Rolleicord. One of my resolutions for this year is to start developing my own black and white film at home.”

She spends much of her time perfecting photos. As Sarah says “...they very rarely come out of the camera perfect. I don't mean that I chop bits out, give them a glowing halo and put them somewhere else; it's much more subtle than that.  Usually the exposure needs a bit of a tweak so that the blacks are black and the whites white, white background can be cleaned up, spots removed, bringing the colours to life and my big personal obsession is making sure that lines are straight and the perspective is square on.“

Please feel free to ask Sarah specific questions about your product photos. We are sure she has a trick or two that could make a huge difference for your images.
Thanks!

Admin

[Eyeshoot Photography]

Thanks for the welcome and hello to everybody who's signed up for the "Sellers' Bootcamp", I was very excited to hear about this as, like everybody else on the site, I would love to see the number of my sales rocket!  So I'm delighted to be involved from the inside and hope that I'll be able to offer good advise to other Bootcamp members and help their shops to look their best and boost those sale!

I'll be starting some threads in the forum and I'll look forward to reading your replies and hopefully I'll be able to give you some good, solid help.

Feel free to ask me any photography related stuff - I don't claim to be an expert on everything, but I'll do my very best to help.

Onwards and upwards towards those sales,

Sarah
https://icraftgifts.com/eyeshoot-photography

[iCraft Admin]

Thanks Sarah!

I am sure you'll be very busy, once people learn where to find you.

[PillowThrowDecor]

Thanks so much for signing up for the photography advice column.  I may be your best customer!!!  

Is it me or my camera?  I have a hard time getting a decent colour representation on my yellow and yellow green pillows.  I take my pictures in mid afternoon which seems to be the best time of day for my house.

I photoshop the dickens out of them but still it always seems a  crappy yellow and not true to reality.

Christine

[Eyeshoot Photography]

Hi Christine - It's always annoying if you can't get the image on your screen to look the same as your subject.

Here's my first reply as official Adviser!

If you're shooting in natural light, you've made a good start!  The light needs to be even and flat with no strong shadows or highlights.  If you are having problems with your colours, my first thought would be that there's something throwing a colour cast onto your pillows, then that you should check that your camera's white balance is set to Auto which is definitely the best setting for natural light.   If your camera doesn't give you any choice in White Balance setting, then it's probably set to Auto anyway.

When you get the pictures in Photoshop, I'd suggest using the Levels control.  Open up the Levels window and in the drop down at the top, select Red, and drag the little arrow directly below the black mountain so they rest at the very edges of the black mass, at either end of the window.  Repeat this for Green and Blue from the dropdown.  Then select RGB and click the Preview Box to see the before and after images.  This is a really simple but powerful tweak to photos and I use it on practically every image that I shoot.

For anyone who doesn't have Photoshop, I would imagine that most other photo image software will offer a similar action, the names may be different though.

I hope this helps!

Sarah

[Loopy4ewe]

Wow! This is awesome.

I have the same issue photographing purple! It always comes out looking blue. I find natural light makes it even worse.

You can see what I mean here:
https://icraftgifts.com/handmade/14651/adult-visor-beanie-grape-violet.php

The top of the hat is actually a really great bold grape colour! I did manage to get it a bit more purple looking by taking pictures indoors with lower light but then I found the pictures weren't as bright. (they're near the end of that one)

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Eyeshoot Photography]

Hi - Purple can be tricky to photograph for some reason!

There will always be a difference between the inside and outside light.

I'd suggest that you check that the white balance on your camera is set to Auto which should work fine unless you're shooting in very strange lighting conditions.  You could have a white piece of card in the shot somewhere so that when you go to Photoshop (or similar programme) you can pick that white as your White Balance Neutral Point and then all colours will be adjusted around that point.  That might sound a bit technical, but it's an excellent method.

Colours always look different on your camera or computer screen compared to the real item and unless you spend much time with calibrating devices and colour profiles there may be a subtle difference in tone.

I had a play with one of your hats in Photoshop Express which is a free, online version of the professional software and it's pretty good for basic alterations, this is what I came up with by just tweaking the colour settings.





I hope some of this is helpful to you,
Sarah

[PillowThrowDecor]

Oh thank you thank you for the yellow advice.

I have photshop7 and have never tried adjusting the thingies but I appreciate how you have described it.  Will play with it and see if I can get my yellow pillow listed.

I struggle with natural light. I pull my wing chair in front of my French door, put my pillows in and with my back to the light Through the door take the picture.  There are two windows on either side of the French door.  It seems that it would be bright enough but often the pictures are dark.  What's up with that?

Oh I love this!

Christine Skaley Reid
PillowThrowDecor
Luxury Handmade Originals
https://icraftgifts.com/pillowthrowdecor

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I don't know much about this stuff, but I use GIMP (free program).  It has an auto colour levels adjustment and then you can use an eye dropper to choose something black and then another one to choose something white in your photo and then it will auto balance.

I have issues with pale blue coming out as white.  I photograph on a black pillow case.  Based on the advice here, I think I will put a piece of white in the picture to use for the balance and then crop it out later.

Thanks for the idea!