IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(music playing)
| | 00:04 |
Hi.
I'm Megan Anderson Reed.
| | 00:06 |
I'm a professional craft blogger,
instructor, photographer, and writer.
| | 00:11 |
I've been making arts and crafts for as
long as I can remember.
| | 00:13 |
But when I started selling my handcrafted
goods online in 2006.
| | 00:18 |
I quickly learned that a picture is worth
way more than a thousand words.
| | 00:22 |
As I started paying attention to and
improving the quality of the photos I
| | 00:25 |
took, I noticed an increase in my craft
sales and blog followers.
| | 00:30 |
As my photographs got better and better,
more and more people noticed.
| | 00:34 |
Many crafters put the bulk of their time
and skill into making their goods, but
| | 00:38 |
get rushed or feel intimidated when it
comes time to taking their product photos.
| | 00:44 |
Likewise many crafters don't even take
photos of their incredible works, even to
| | 00:48 |
share with others or just to keep as
personal records.
| | 00:52 |
Sometimes they think they need a super
expensive camera to take quality photos.
| | 00:57 |
Sometimes they finish their projects very
late at night and assume the low lighting
| | 01:00 |
conditions will prevent them from getting
a decent shot.
| | 01:03 |
But with just a few tips and a little
practice, anyone with a camera can make
| | 01:07 |
photos of their handy work more
compelling, memorable, and appealing to
| | 01:10 |
prospective buyers and interested
friends.
| | 01:14 |
In these lessons, I'll take you step by
step, through the basis of craft photography.
| | 01:20 |
You'll get familiar with how a camera
works, and how to use a variety of camera
| | 01:23 |
settings in different situations.
We'll look at several ways to make a
| | 01:28 |
craft photo look more compelling with
great composition techniques that you can
| | 01:32 |
try anywhere with any camera.
Plus we'll do a little crafting ourselves
| | 01:37 |
by making three kinds of affordable at
home and mobile photo studios.
| | 01:42 |
I'll share some of my favorite must-see
image editing tips that don't require
| | 01:46 |
expensive software, and talk about some
great resources for getting your craft
| | 01:51 |
images blogged about, printed, sold, and
seen by the masses.
| | 01:57 |
Most of the images I use in these lessons
are included in the project files, so you
| | 02:00 |
can follow along and practice the
techniques that you'll learn.
| | 02:05 |
Whether your taking photos of handmade
crafts to sell, looking for tips on
| | 02:08 |
product photography or just wanting to
improve the quality and composition of
| | 02:11 |
photos that you plan on sharing with your
friends and family.
| | 02:15 |
I hope that after these lessons you'll be
excited to try out and practice the
| | 02:19 |
techniques I've covered here.
I've really enjoyed creating these video
| | 02:24 |
tutorials and I hope that you find them
interesting.
| | 02:26 |
Informative, and most of all, fun.
| | 02:30 |
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1. Getting Familiar with the Camera Understanding aperture value and f-stops| 00:01 |
Have you ever looked at your eyes in a
mirror in very, very dark light?
| | 00:05 |
You may have noticed that your pupil,
that black part of your eye, gets really
| | 00:08 |
wide in dark light.
That's to accommodate, try to get as much
| | 00:12 |
light as possible so that you can see.
Now, if you've ever been outside in a
| | 00:16 |
very bright situation, kinda hurts when
you first go out there.
| | 00:20 |
Your pupil's going to get very, very
small and that's because there's so much
| | 00:23 |
light coming in.
Your eyes need to, to make adjustments so
| | 00:27 |
that you can see everything.
If you think about your camera's lens as
| | 00:31 |
an extension of your eye, then you
already understand aperture.
| | 00:35 |
In order to get a good exposure when
you're taking a photograph.
| | 00:38 |
You've got an aperture inside your lense
and that's a hole just like the pupil in
| | 00:41 |
your eye.
When it's very dark out, you need to have
| | 00:45 |
a wide aperture.
A large large apeture so that as much
| | 00:49 |
light as possible can come into your
camera, hitting the sensor that's going
| | 00:53 |
to create the image.
On the flip side of that, when you're
| | 00:57 |
outside and there's very very bright
light, it's very very bright.
| | 01:01 |
You're going to have a super tiny hole, so
that a trickle of light can come in to
| | 01:05 |
produce an image.
So, wide aperture for very dark
| | 01:09 |
situations, small aperture for very
bright situations.
| | 01:15 |
The way we measure that change is called
F stop.
| | 01:18 |
So here comes the curveball.
A really wide open aperture actually has
| | 01:22 |
a very small number, and a very small
aperture actually has a huge number.
| | 01:28 |
I wish it wasn't the case, it would be
way easier to, easier to remember.
| | 01:31 |
if it was large aperture means large
number and small means small, but it's not.
| | 01:36 |
Forget what I just said a large aperture
actually has a very tiny number.
| | 01:41 |
And just like a very tiny number is
associated with a very large hole a very
| | 01:44 |
large hole is associated with a very tiny
number.
| | 01:49 |
So just remember that opposites attract
and that's theUNKNOWN.
| | 01:53 |
So, how would we know what our camera
lenses are capable of.
| | 01:57 |
Here's an example of a lens that I have
been using, and this is actually my 50
| | 02:00 |
millimeter lens, you can see that that's
indicated right here, and that has an F
| | 02:03 |
stop of 1.8.
So this lens is great because the
| | 02:08 |
aperture, the hole can get really wide,
and it allows a lot of light to come in,
| | 02:12 |
so it's perfect for low light situations.
So how do these changes in our aperture
| | 02:19 |
affect the image?
Well, that's actually called Depth of Field.
| | 02:24 |
When we have a very large aperture, in a
very small F stop number, just a very
| | 02:28 |
small part of our image is in focus, of
our composition.
| | 02:34 |
In fact, with a very shallow depth of
field, you can get so detailed that you
| | 02:37 |
can just focus in on one little part of a
craft.
| | 02:41 |
Just narrow in on one little sprinkle on
this cupcake.
| | 02:44 |
If we wanted to have a very wide depth of
field where the entire composition is in focus.
| | 02:50 |
Then we would want to use a larger F stop
and really have a small aperture.
| | 02:54 |
That's going to put this entire, this entire
composition in nice, sharp focus.
| | 02:59 |
That's maybe what landscape photographers
would do where you want to see everything.
| | 03:03 |
But for craft photography, I often use a
shallow depth of field, just to really
| | 03:07 |
highlight specific parts of the craft.
And really draw your attention to just
| | 03:11 |
one little area.
So, depth of field and, the amount of
| | 03:15 |
light that is coming in and hitting your
camera's sensor, is controlled by aperture.
| | 03:22 |
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| What is shutter speed?| 00:01 |
So if aperture controls the amount of
light that's allowed in your camera, you
| | 00:04 |
can think about shutter speed as
controlling the amount of time that that
| | 00:07 |
light is allowed into your camera.
I know that kind of sounds confusing, but
| | 00:12 |
you can think about it like this, have
you ever baked a batch of cookies?
| | 00:16 |
It's very similar to baking a photograph
in your camera.
| | 00:19 |
You need to set your oven to a specific
temperature in order to get things ready.
| | 00:24 |
And when you're taking a good exposure,
you need to set your aperture to a
| | 00:27 |
certain temperature or F-stop to allow a
specific amount of light in.
| | 00:32 |
Now, in order to get that perfect batch
of cookies, you're going to have to take
| | 00:35 |
those cookies out of the oven at the
specific amount of time that the recipe
| | 00:38 |
calls for.
It's the same thing with photography.
| | 00:42 |
Shutter speed is like setting the time on
your oven.
| | 00:45 |
You need to figure out exactly how long
your exposure is going to take in order
| | 00:50 |
to get a perfectly exposed image.
So if I wanted to take a picture of this
| | 00:55 |
scene over here I would think about what
my aperture is but also how long I want
| | 00:59 |
that light to come into the camera.
If I keep the if I keep the exposure open
| | 01:06 |
too long.
If I keep that shutter open too long, I'm
| | 01:09 |
going to get a really over exposed image
just like if I left my cookies in the
| | 01:12 |
oven too long I would get a completely
burnt and inedible batch of cookies.
| | 01:17 |
Neither one of these scenarios is a good
thing.
| | 01:20 |
So, let's take a look at our camera.
If we were going to take a picture with one
| | 01:23 |
second shutter speed.
That sounds really fast right.
| | 01:26 |
One second super fast.
Not fast on the camera.
| | 01:30 |
This is measured in fractions of a
second.
| | 01:32 |
So the larger the denominator is in your
fraction, the faster your shutter speed
| | 01:37 |
is going to be.
Letting only a very small amount of light
| | 01:41 |
in, which is going to do some other cool
things in a second.
| | 01:45 |
So I got a little scenario set up here
and I'm going to take a picture and see what
| | 01:49 |
exactly happens when I set my shutter
speed to one second.
| | 01:54 |
Oh here we are, okay.
Let's see, yep it's now on focus, looking
| | 02:02 |
good and, wow.
That was a really slow shutter speed.
| | 02:07 |
One second is kind of a long time.
I don't know if you can see this but I
| | 02:12 |
have a super overexposed image here and
that is not going to work at all for me.
| | 02:16 |
So I'm going to make our shutter speed
just a bit faster here.
| | 02:21 |
Let's try out 1 25th of a second, take a
look.
| | 02:26 |
I think that might just do the trick.
Perfect, that looks so much better.
| | 02:31 |
One twenty-fifth a second is really nice.
Now, another thing that shutter speed can
| | 02:36 |
do, in addition to giving you perfectly
baked cookies and perfectly baked photos,
| | 02:41 |
is it can control time and movement.
So If we were shooting a photograph of a
| | 02:47 |
jumping frog or a flame moving and we
wanted to freeze that action, we could
| | 02:51 |
boost the shutter speed, just make it
really, really fast and then anything
| | 02:55 |
that we shoot is just going to be frozen in
motion or frozen in mid-air.
| | 03:03 |
It won't even look like it's moving at
all.
| | 03:05 |
This is also a really cool thing to think
about if you have a craft that has some
| | 03:08 |
kind of moving component.
And you want that moving component to
| | 03:12 |
look blurred, so that in your photograph
you can say, hey I just made this cool
| | 03:15 |
craft and it's got this moving thing,
check it out.
| | 03:18 |
And it's got a little blur associated
with it.
| | 03:21 |
Just slow down your shutter speed,
compensate with your light with the
| | 03:24 |
aperture and you ISO.
But your shutter speed is going to control
| | 03:27 |
the movement and you can get some really
cool effects out of it.
| | 03:30 |
I'm just going to take a picture here with
our flame to give you a good idea.
| | 03:35 |
All I'm doing right now, I'm just going to
make the shutter speed really really fast.
| | 03:40 |
So I'm not actually I'm not going to change
anything else, just to show you what happens.
| | 03:45 |
(audio playing) Blowing on those candles, I'm
freezing the can, the flame in perfect
| | 03:49 |
still motion, but everything else is
completely underexposed, it's totally
| | 03:54 |
black, so I would need to change my ISO
and my aperture to get a really nice exposure.
| | 04:02 |
But I think you get the idea of what
shutter speed controls.
| | 04:06 |
Basically, it controls any kind of motion
that you, you want to capture, if it's
| | 04:09 |
frozen in air, or kind of blurred to have
a cool effect.
| | 04:14 |
And also, it's one of the main components
in perfect exposure, controlling time,
| | 04:17 |
how much light's effecting your, your
digital sensor in your camera.
| | 04:22 |
Working hand and hand with aperture and
ISO is going to get you great exposure.
| | 04:26 |
And that is how shutter speed works.
| | 04:29 |
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| Using shutter priority and aperture priority| 00:00 |
Understanding the theory behind aperture,
shutter speed and ISO is one thing, using
| | 00:04 |
them in a practical application can be
quiet another.
| | 00:08 |
Fortunately, most digital SLRs have two
modes that can really help you out if you
| | 00:12 |
want to get off of automatic mode and try
some new settings out, and those are the
| | 00:16 |
aperture and shutter priority mode.
What's great about these two things is
| | 00:21 |
that they only, or these two modes, is
they only control one thing.
| | 00:25 |
So, right now, I'm on shutter priority
mode.
| | 00:28 |
It's TV here.
It might be S on some cameras.
| | 00:31 |
And all that it affects, is the shutter
speed.
| | 00:33 |
The camera's going to take into, into
account all the aperture that you need,
| | 00:37 |
to get a perfect exposure, so you can
really get creative with motion.
| | 00:41 |
TV or, or S on some cameras.
This shutter priority, it's such a
| | 00:46 |
helpful mode if you want to show, something
very blurred like it's moving very
| | 00:50 |
quickly or freeze something perfectly
still.
| | 00:54 |
Shutter priority is, it's like the
training wheels.
| | 00:58 |
Taking off the training wheels, and
getting to experiment with motion.
| | 01:02 |
It's really exciting.
Now I'm going to move over to AV.
| | 01:06 |
AV or A on some cameras as aperture,
aperture priority and aperture priority
| | 01:10 |
controls the size of your aperture, how
much light is coming in when you're
| | 01:14 |
taking a shot.
And what does that control, dept of field.
| | 01:19 |
I have an example here of a couple of
photographs I took.
| | 01:23 |
And these photographs, are going to show
you the differences in depth of field.
| | 01:29 |
In my hand over here, I have a very
shallow depth of field.
| | 01:33 |
In this hand right here, I have a very
deep depth of field and that's just a
| | 01:36 |
change in the aperture that I took on
aperture priority.
| | 01:40 |
And I felt really comfortable
experimenting with different options,
| | 01:43 |
because I knew that my camera was going to
take care of the shutter speed so that I
| | 01:47 |
would get a great exposure.
So to feel free, get really creative with
| | 01:52 |
shutter priority to control motion or
aperture priority to control depth of
| | 01:56 |
field, all you need to need to do is just
switch this little lever right here A, to
| | 02:00 |
a TV or S for shutter priority, AV or A
to aperture priority.
| | 02:07 |
Go out, experiment, see what you come up
with.
| | 02:10 |
Your camera is going to take care of the
exposure, so you take care of the rest.
| | 02:13 |
Use your creativity.
| | 02:15 |
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| What is ISO?| 00:00 |
If you've ever tried shooting photographs
of your crafts inside or in low, low
| | 00:04 |
light situations, you've probably noticed
that you've gotten some blurry shots, or
| | 00:08 |
maybe some camera shake.
And if you understand how to use your ISO
| | 00:13 |
on your digital camera, you can combat
that and get some great images in low
| | 00:16 |
light situations.
ISO is one of the three big things you
| | 00:21 |
need to understand when it comes to
exposure.
| | 00:26 |
But all you really need to remember is
that ISO controls the sensitivity your
| | 00:30 |
digital sensor has to the available
light.
| | 00:33 |
It's kind of like when we had film
cameras.
| | 00:35 |
The digital sensor is determining what
kind of light situation we're in and then
| | 00:39 |
it's making adjustment for it.
So, because we're out here in this bright
| | 00:43 |
light, we actually only need a very low
ISO.
| | 00:45 |
Our camera doesn't need very much
sensitivity.
| | 00:48 |
If we were back shooting crafts in that
barn.
| | 00:51 |
We would want to crank our ISO way up, so
that we could absorb more light, and get
| | 00:54 |
a nice clear picture.
An higher ISO in a dark place also means,
| | 00:59 |
that we can have a faster shutter speed,
because the digital sensor, when the ISO
| | 01:02 |
is higher, absorbs light more quickly.
So that's great.
| | 01:07 |
You might not even need to use a tripod
if you don't have available light or if
| | 01:11 |
you don't have extra reflectors.
Just kick-up your ISO and play with it
| | 01:15 |
and see what kind of shots you can get in
a dark situation.
| | 01:18 |
The only thing to think about when you
are using a higher ISO is that you can
| | 01:22 |
get more noise or film not distortion but
just a little bit of a graininess in your
| | 01:26 |
images, with a higher ISO.
Other than that, it's a really cool tool.
| | 01:32 |
And something that you can experiment
with.
| | 01:35 |
And it's also one of the three main
factors regarding a good exposure.
| | 01:39 |
So if you can understand the ISO is just
related to the sensitivity of light,
| | 01:43 |
whether it's a very low ISO for bright
light, or very high ISO for dark light situations.
| | 01:50 |
Then you're already on your way to
understanding ISO and getting great
| | 01:54 |
exposures in all kinds of lighting.
| | 01:57 |
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| Achieving the proper exposure| 00:01 |
One of the most important things about
photography, not in just craft
| | 00:03 |
photography, is getting the proper
exposure.
| | 00:06 |
And there are three things that really
make up the proper exposure, or three
| | 00:09 |
different ways that we can change the
light that's around us to manipulate it
| | 00:13 |
and, and get the proper exposure.
And that is by working with shutter
| | 00:18 |
speed, aperture, and ISO.
So we're here in the woods right now, and
| | 00:22 |
we're taking some photographs of these
wooden rings.
| | 00:25 |
But we really need to pay attention to
our surrounding, not just visually
| | 00:28 |
hobeautiful it is, but what's happening
to the light, because that's going to
| | 00:32 |
determine what we need to do to change
our settings and get a really quality
| | 00:35 |
photograph that's got a good balance of
lights and darks.
| | 00:41 |
So I'm going to take a shot and see what
I'm working with here.
| | 00:48 |
Okay so my photograph is a little bit
white.
| | 00:50 |
I'm going to take a look right here.
I'm actually, shooting in manual so I can
| | 00:54 |
control all different aspects and get the
exposure I want.
| | 00:58 |
I'm shooting right now on my tripod at a
twentieth of a second.
| | 01:02 |
F 5.0 and within ISO100 and I don't know
if I am crazy about the way that, that
| | 01:06 |
looks so I can change any of these
settings to allow more light to come in
| | 01:09 |
or allow shorter period of time for the
light to come in or even increase the
| | 01:14 |
sensitivity to see how my camera is going to
react.
| | 01:20 |
And what we really want to go for is well,
first of all, if you're, if you're not
| | 01:24 |
sure what the proper exposure is, most
cameras have a histogram.
| | 01:30 |
And that's a, a graphic rep,
representation of all the information
| | 01:33 |
that's in your photograph.
It's telling you how much light, how much
| | 01:37 |
dark, there's even histograms for color.
So I'm just going to hop over to that right
| | 01:41 |
now and see what my camera is telling me
as far as the photograph that I just took.
| | 01:47 |
So, when I took the photograph I could
tell that the color was just, it's a
| | 01:50 |
little bit too light.
And I've got some little areas of black
| | 01:55 |
here that maybe some clipping is
occurring, I'm losing some of my data.
| | 02:00 |
But a minute ago I just took another
photograph, and that was shot a thirtieth
| | 02:05 |
of a second, at 5.0.
And I can see that all of my data is
| | 02:10 |
just snug, right in the middle of my
histogram, meaning I've got a really
| | 02:14 |
great balance of light and dark.
And for me, that's the perfect exposure
| | 02:19 |
that I want to achieve for this craft.
Now, you might once your, once your
| | 02:23 |
playing with exposure and to be able to
control all these different settings you
| | 02:27 |
can either shoot in manual or program
mode but if you want to kind of take baby
| | 02:30 |
step into it you can maybe work in
shutter priority aperture priority.
| | 02:37 |
But then your camera's going to compensate
for any changes that you're manually
| | 02:40 |
making, it's going to say, hey wait a
second, you just changed the F stop, or
| | 02:42 |
hey you just changed the shutter speed,
so I'm going to do this, I'm going to make
| | 02:45 |
these little adjustments, so that you
keep getting a gray exposure.
| | 02:51 |
So if you really want to play with it,
and see how experimental you get you're
| | 02:54 |
going to want to stick with manual or, program
mode.
| | 02:58 |
So, I'm going to come back here, take a look
at my histogram, and I can see I like
| | 03:02 |
this exposure alot, but if that's not
your personal esthetic for achieving exposure.
| | 03:09 |
If you like a much darker photograph, or
you like a very light airy, then that's
| | 03:12 |
fine, you can just work with it and see
what you want.
| | 03:17 |
I kind of recommend going for a solid
like properly exposed photograph and then
| | 03:20 |
maybe making some of your asthetic
changes later in your image editing
| | 03:24 |
software because your going to get the
most data that you can to work with.
| | 03:29 |
But those are my tips for getting proper
exposure.
| | 03:32 |
Focus on the light that's all around you
like I said right now we're in the woods
| | 03:35 |
kind of shady but its the middle of the
day really think about your surroundings.
| | 03:40 |
What color your craft is if its light,
dark all of these things are going to
| | 03:44 |
bounce light in different directions.
They're going to feed light and color into
| | 03:48 |
your camera in different ways so you need
to play with your settings and really get
| | 03:52 |
familiar with ISO, aperture and shutter
speed in order to get the best exposure
| | 03:56 |
for your craft photography.
And you're just photography, photography
| | 04:02 |
whenever you're out shooting in the
woods, shooting landscapes, portraits.
| | 04:07 |
Exposure is the most important thing that
you need to focus on, so I hope that with
| | 04:11 |
these tips, you'll get some good practice
in.
| | 04:14 |
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| Using depth of field| 00:00 |
I recently made some crafts for some of
my girlfriends.
| | 00:04 |
I made them little heart-shaped pins, and
before I mailed them out, I wanted to
| | 00:07 |
take a photograph of them.
So I took them outside, I put them on a
| | 00:10 |
nice piece of Ribbon, and I found a
pretty background that I could set them on.
| | 00:14 |
I took several photographs of these pins,
in the exact same location, with the
| | 00:19 |
exact same lighting situations, the only
thing I changed was the aperture.
| | 00:24 |
And when I got back inside, and
downloaded these photographs to my
| | 00:27 |
computer, I noticed some very different
things going on, in the photos.
| | 00:32 |
First of all, when I looked at this
photograph, I was admiring my handwork, I
| | 00:36 |
was looking at the bright colors of the
pens, thinking about which pen I'd give
| | 00:40 |
to which friend.
I was really happy with the way it
| | 00:45 |
looked, the composition and just the
craft itself.
| | 00:48 |
I was pretty pleased.
When I look at this photograph, I
| | 00:52 |
couldn't help but think that I needed to
invest in some kind of pest control for
| | 00:56 |
my orange tree because I noticed all
these little bug in the leaves of my tree.
| | 01:03 |
I also noticed that I have some ripe
fruit growing in the background.
| | 01:06 |
But I didn't want to be noticing this,
this photograph is about the craft, not
| | 01:10 |
my orange tree.
So, this is a great example of depth of field.
| | 01:17 |
The first photograph I showed you, is
actually a perfect example of a shallow
| | 01:20 |
depth of field.
And depth of field simply refers to the,
| | 01:24 |
the range within your photograph that's
in focus.
| | 01:28 |
So when you have a lot of things in the
foreground that are out of focus, like
| | 01:31 |
this leaf that's hanging over the Ribbon.
And this orange, in the background, when
| | 01:36 |
the background and the foreground are out
of focus, and there's just one area
| | 01:40 |
that's crystal clear, that's called a
shallow depth of field.
| | 01:44 |
And we would use that to draw the viewers
attention to exactly what we want them to see.
| | 01:49 |
In fact, it's kind of the way your eye
works, when you're looking at something,
| | 01:52 |
you're not looking at everything in
perfect clear focus at the same time.
| | 01:57 |
Your eye is scanning all different parts
of the frame and then it's just taking in
| | 02:01 |
that information, but it can only process
one little point in a perfect focus at a time.
| | 02:07 |
So, while I'm look at you and your
looking at me, you're not seeing me
| | 02:09 |
entirely in focus right now your eye is
just scanning all over the place.
| | 02:15 |
That's what makes depth of field so
powerful in photographs, because you are
| | 02:19 |
making the decision for the viewer what
they're going to see.
| | 02:24 |
If I put this photograph up on my blog, I
would probably get some comments about my
| | 02:28 |
ripe fruit of my rotten looking leaves.
But in this photograph, I'm not giving
| | 02:34 |
anybody that opportunity.
I just want them to look at the craft.
| | 02:37 |
So, using Depth of Field is a great tool
for that.
| | 02:39 |
And here's how we do it; I'm going to put my
photographs aside and I've got a little
| | 02:43 |
situation where I've got some candles
that I've made and I've got some jewelry
| | 02:46 |
and it's all laid out.
And you can see that there's a real span here.
| | 02:52 |
The foot, the, the setting starts out
over here, and then maybe ten inches
| | 02:56 |
later it ends.
So I'm going to take some photographs.
| | 03:00 |
And I just want to, isolate certain parts
of this, of this composition in my photograph.
| | 03:05 |
So I've got a fixed lens.
I'm using my 50 millimeter fixed lens,
| | 03:09 |
because it's got a nice wide aperture,
which means I'm going to get a great
| | 03:12 |
Depth of field.
And I'm going to come on over here.
| | 03:15 |
And first of all I've got my focus set to
manual.
| | 03:20 |
And I'm just going to focus in on this first
snail shell candle.
| | 03:26 |
Nice clear focus and as I move my camera
and take the photograph.
| | 03:32 |
I notice that everything else is
completely out of focus, the only thing
| | 03:35 |
that I can see right now is the snail
shell, and that's great, that's exactly
| | 03:39 |
what I want.
Now I'm going to move my focus to the
| | 03:43 |
center of the composition, I want to just
focus in on that little snail shell.
| | 03:49 |
So I'm just going to change my focus, and as
I do that, everything else falls out of focus.
| | 03:56 |
It's a really powerful tool.
It's a great way to show somebody only
| | 03:59 |
the fine details of your craft.
It's a way to lead the viewers eye into
| | 04:04 |
just specifically what you want them to
see and it's just a really powerful tool
| | 04:07 |
to understand when you're in specific
environments shooting craft.
| | 04:14 |
It's also good to know when you wouldn't
use it.
| | 04:16 |
You wouldn't want to use a shallow depth of
field for, say, landscape photography.
| | 04:20 |
Where you wanted everything to be very
clear in the background.
| | 04:23 |
But I use this a lot when I'm shooting
specific crafts in a product placement.
| | 04:27 |
And I just want people to see, maybe,
like one detail.
| | 04:30 |
With depth of field, you can get so
finely detailed, that I could just focus
| | 04:33 |
in on this little point of the snail
shell.
| | 04:36 |
And then everything else will fall away,
so that's how we use depth of field,
| | 04:39 |
that's how we achieve it, and I would
definitely encourage you to try it out.
| | 04:44 |
This is one of the most important things
you'll want to learn about in digital photography.
| | 04:53 |
In addition to aperture, shutter speed,
ISO, getting a good exposure using depth
| | 05:00 |
of field effectively in your craft
photography is really going to get you
| | 05:06 |
great results.
| | 05:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using point-and-shoot cameras| 00:01 |
A lot of people think that you need a
really expensive digital SLR to take good
| | 00:05 |
craft photos.
But the truth is, you can get some really
| | 00:10 |
great shots using just a ca-, compact
camera.
| | 00:13 |
What this lacks in maybe the versatility
or the zoom, of a lens of a digital SLR.
| | 00:20 |
This actually makes up for in
portability, it's compact nature.
| | 00:25 |
And if you learn how to use the settings,
it actually takes some great shots.
| | 00:31 |
So, I've got some crafts set up over
here.
| | 00:35 |
Why don't we take some shots and see what
we get.
| | 00:39 |
Now before I start shooting my little
glittery unicorns.
| | 00:42 |
I'm going to show you a couple of things I
got going here.
| | 00:45 |
First of all I can set my display on my
handheld my little compact camera to show
| | 00:50 |
this grid that makes it really easy to
shoot.
| | 00:54 |
And observe the rule of thirds because I
can just pick one of these little points
| | 00:58 |
and place my subject right on those.
And I'm guaranteed to have a wonderful
| | 01:04 |
composition just about every single time.
I'm also shooting this little tiny flower
| | 01:10 |
icon, that means I'm shooting in Macro.
And I can get really close up, which is
| | 01:16 |
nice with this compact camera.
You can also adjust aperture, exposure It
| | 01:21 |
doesn't have the same lens as a digital
SLR but it's got a lot of versatility.
| | 01:26 |
So let's get down here and take a couple
of shots.
| | 01:30 |
So first of all you might notice that I'm
balanced on these rocks and they're a
| | 01:35 |
little bit slippery.
They're kind of precarious.
| | 01:39 |
This isn't really where I want to be
shooting with my digital SLR.
| | 01:43 |
It's expensive, it's heavy, it's kinds of
bulky, with those compact camera if I'ts
| | 01:48 |
nicely in my hand.
I got this secure wrist strap, I feel
| | 01:52 |
like I'm safer almost having this small
camera in my hand.
| | 01:57 |
So I'm going to just get down really little
here, take a couple of shots and see what
| | 02:00 |
I can come up with.
(audio playing)
| | 02:03 |
All right.
By shooting low, I'm also getting a great
| | 02:06 |
angle on these things.
I've got a nice background.
| | 02:09 |
I'm able to adjust my exposure.
And I have the option to shoot with a
| | 02:17 |
flash or without.
So, I don't really like it with the flash.
| | 02:20 |
So I'm going to shut that off.
Much better.
| | 02:24 |
We've got a really nice light right here.
So, it's totally possible to get a great
| | 02:28 |
shot with a compact camera.
You can take it wherever you want and
| | 02:31 |
feel safe and confident your not going to
break your really expensive digital SLR.
| | 02:36 |
And the bonus is, that because it's so
compact, you can take craft photos on the go.
| | 02:41 |
So it's really win, win.
These are a good idea to have around.
| | 02:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Basic Composition and Staging TipsUsing the viewfinder to frame the image| 00:02 |
As we photograph our handmade items it's
our responsibility to make choices, that
| | 00:05 |
are going to give our viewers the most
compelling and meaningful captures that
| | 00:09 |
we can.
By framing an image within the Viewfinder
| | 00:13 |
of our camera, we can draw the viewers
attention to exactly what we want them to see.
| | 00:18 |
Of course we can crop our photos in image
editing software after the fact, but it's
| | 00:22 |
really a good idea to get in the habit of
framing your image just the way you want
| | 00:25 |
it while you're taking the shot.
So that you have more to work with when
| | 00:30 |
you find that you need to crop it later
on.
| | 00:32 |
And there can also be a lot going on just
outside the Viewfinder, so before we
| | 00:35 |
press the shutter button, there are a
couple of things we want to consider.
| | 00:39 |
As we use the Viewfinder to frame the
image, we want to think about what shape
| | 00:42 |
our craft is.
Is it 3 Dimensional?
| | 00:46 |
Is it flat?
Is it round?
| | 00:47 |
In our example we have a flat, horizontal
puzzle.
| | 00:51 |
And our first picture is a flat, straight
on shot.
| | 00:54 |
It's pretty self-explanatory.
It's just a step away from a glorified snapshot.
| | 01:00 |
Not really all that compelling, but it
does a good job telling you it's a puzzle.
| | 01:06 |
In our second example, we have a slightly
more compelling image, because we removed
| | 01:10 |
a couple of the puzzle pieces.
Something to consider when we're taking
| | 01:15 |
these shots, is do we want to fill the
frame and focus on one specific aspect or
| | 01:18 |
detail of the craft, or do we want to see
the entire thing all of it's parts and pieces?
| | 01:25 |
And with this example, since it is a
puzzle, we could remove quite a few parts
| | 01:28 |
and pieces.
But by just by removing a couple of the
| | 01:31 |
puzzle pieces, we get enough of an idea
of what is going on here.
| | 01:35 |
We can see a little jack-o-lantern faces
beneath the pieces.
| | 01:37 |
So it's good enough for what we are
doing, for what we are trying to
| | 01:40 |
accomplish, but it's still not super
compelling.
| | 01:44 |
So the third thing to consider is vantage
point and the camera's position and
| | 01:47 |
orientation as we take the photograph.
Now in this image we're doing a couple of things.
| | 01:53 |
We have filled the entire frame with the
image so we really gotta close crop of
| | 01:56 |
this puzzle through the Viewfinder.
And we also tilted the image so its kind
| | 02:00 |
of at an angle here you can see its sort
of slanted, now one other thing that we
| | 02:03 |
did, I did remove the puzzle piece so
that you can still get a hint that there
| | 02:07 |
is a little jack-o-lantern on, on face
below you might wonder if there is
| | 02:10 |
something over here too.
There is a few different things going on
| | 02:15 |
so we've implemented a couple of
different tips and tricks here and it has
| | 02:19 |
made for a much more compelling image.
Now, of the three things we just talked
| | 02:24 |
about, what shape is the craft, do we
want to frame the entire thing, and just
| | 02:27 |
focus on one detail, or do we want to
have kind of a birds eye view, and you
| | 02:30 |
can see all the edges of the craft, or do
we want to get really interesting with
| | 02:34 |
our angles and kind of change the
orientation?
| | 02:40 |
Between these three things, there should
be some helpful tips that help you get
| | 02:44 |
the best photograph of your particular
craft possible.
| | 02:47 |
But if you're not sure what your angles
are, and how your craft looks the best, I
| | 02:51 |
definitely recommend taking as many
photographs as possible.
| | 02:55 |
You might think that the angle you're
shooting at is perfect, but the more
| | 02:59 |
photographs you take, the more
possibility there is for something
| | 03:03 |
exciting to happen, for some new cool
perspective.
| | 03:08 |
So I do recommend taking as many
photographs as possible and when you
| | 03:12 |
download them to your computer, go
through all of them and see which one you
| | 03:15 |
like the best.
| | 03:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The power of negative space| 00:02 |
A somewhat unconventional, yet really
intriguing way to shoot photos of your
| | 00:06 |
crafts, is by using what's called
negative space.
| | 00:09 |
And negative space is when the background
of an image really helps define the
| | 00:13 |
foreground of the image.
So, in the example on your screen right
| | 00:18 |
now, we have a picture of a pop up card
that I made for Valentine's Day, and I
| | 00:22 |
used a very light paper, it has just a
very subtle texture on it.
| | 00:28 |
But I really wanted to show the motion of
the card, so I shot it against a very
| | 00:32 |
dark background.
And by doing that, I created a contrast
| | 00:37 |
in light.
And this contrast in light, while I
| | 00:40 |
didn't notice it right away.
When I was shooting the image as soon as
| | 00:45 |
I downloaded it to my computer, I noticed
that my eye kept traveling around the
| | 00:49 |
line of this card.
And I noticed more and more that this
| | 00:53 |
background, this really dark background
was providing a tremendous presence
| | 00:58 |
within the image.
And when you have that situation where
| | 01:02 |
there is a balance between the background
of a craft photo and the foreground of a
| | 01:05 |
craft photo, you end up with a really
cool relationship between the dark and
| | 01:09 |
the light.
And so in this case, it is negative space
| | 01:13 |
because it's got a very hard line that
moves your eye around the image, and it's
| | 01:18 |
got a very well balanced relationship
between the lights and darks.
| | 01:24 |
Now, another way to achieve negative
space in craft photography is by shooting
| | 01:28 |
your craft in silhouette.
Again, this is not going to probably make
| | 01:33 |
you a lot of sales for your craft but
it's certainly going to provide a really
| | 01:37 |
high artistic merit.
So, this is actually not a craft that I made.
| | 01:42 |
This is a photograph I took of a statue I
took in Nashville but it was such an
| | 01:46 |
interesting, overcast, bright day, and I
really wanted to capture the shape of the statue.
| | 01:53 |
So again, while this isn't a craft that I
made.
| | 01:56 |
This is a technique that you could
totally use and apply to a 3D craft that
| | 01:59 |
you've made.
All you really need to think about is
| | 02:03 |
whether the foreground or background is
darker, and think about your angles.
| | 02:08 |
Think about your composition.
This particular image is striking because
| | 02:12 |
this arm is just jetting across the
frame.
| | 02:14 |
And then there's another minature statue
here in his hand.
| | 02:18 |
So your eye just wants to move back and
forth, back and forth, and try to figure
| | 02:21 |
out what's going on.
But there's also a real balance between
| | 02:25 |
the light and dark.
And while you can't see any details of
| | 02:28 |
the statue itself.
There's so much information over here.
| | 02:32 |
Just in the fine details of the negative
space.
| | 02:35 |
That you feel like you can fill in the
blanks.
| | 02:38 |
And that's a cool technique when your eye
is being tricked into looking at
| | 02:41 |
something longer than it might just
because it really wants to figure out
| | 02:45 |
exactly what's going on.
So, again, if you have a really cool 3D
| | 02:49 |
craft, try shooting it in silhouette just
to get a really interesting negative
| | 02:53 |
space effect and see if you like it.
Finally I wanted to show you one last
| | 03:01 |
example of negative space, and that's
when your craft casts a really cool shadow.
| | 03:06 |
Now in this case, again I have a deer
head, a papier-mache deer head I made,
| | 03:10 |
and while this photo is probably not
going to make a lot of sales online, it is
| | 03:13 |
going to really show off how cool this deer
looks from the side.
| | 03:19 |
I have this particular craft lit over
here from the side, so it's casting a
| | 03:23 |
really hard, long shadow.
But I'm totally okay with that because I
| | 03:27 |
wanted this hard line, this, this
negative space to just fill my
| | 03:31 |
composition and kinda just lead your eye
all around the shape and all around the
| | 03:35 |
image and it's done that from head on.
You don't really get a feeling for
| | 03:41 |
exactly how long the neck is and, of
course, in a shadow it is exaggerated.
| | 03:45 |
But it just looks that much more elegant
and interesting, and it's also kind of
| | 03:48 |
setting a mood.
There's sort of an Alfred Hitchcock think
| | 03:52 |
going on here, and I like it.
I think it's a really effective way to
| | 03:56 |
show shape of something in a very
unconventional and interesting way.
| | 04:01 |
So when your shooting your crafts of
course get the clean product shot, get
| | 04:05 |
the nice habitat shot, but also play
around with your composition, your
| | 04:09 |
framing, your angles.
And try out negative space, see if you
| | 04:13 |
can get some cool results.
You might not use the final result on
| | 04:18 |
your blog or in your online store, but it
might end up being a really cool photo
| | 04:23 |
that you're just fond of for its graphic
effects and it's really neat element of design.
| | 04:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating lines to make compelling compositions| 00:01 |
In this movie, we're going to talk about
creating lines to get a really
| | 00:04 |
interesting composition with your craft
photography.
| | 00:07 |
So, I've made these little candles with
escargot snail shells.
| | 00:12 |
And we're in this beautiful setting.
And what I'm noticing about the place
| | 00:15 |
that we're in right now.
First of all, I'm really excited to be
| | 00:19 |
shooting these here because, they kinda
look like they would exists here freely
| | 00:22 |
on their own.
But we've got this great background, and
| | 00:26 |
there's a lot of really interesting lines
happening naturally.
| | 00:30 |
So I'd like to mimic that in my craft
photography.
| | 00:34 |
When you're creating lines with your
photography, you're doing a few different things.
| | 00:39 |
You're drawing the viewers eyes to
certain area.
| | 00:42 |
You're bringing attention to specific
parts of the craft.
| | 00:45 |
And you're adding depth to your craft
photography.
| | 00:48 |
So, why don't we crawl up the mountain
here and take some nice shots of our
| | 00:51 |
snail shell candles.
Follow me.
| | 00:55 |
(NOISE) Okay, I've got my snail shell
candle, and I'm going to finish one of the
| | 01:01 |
lines I started here.
Just going to place it right here.
| | 01:07 |
And you might have noticed, I have a
couple of safety precautions that I'm
| | 01:10 |
working with right here.
We've got fire burning in a forest.
| | 01:15 |
Not usually a great idea but we do have a
running stream.
| | 01:19 |
So, I do not encourage you to light a
match or light a row of candles in a forest.
| | 01:25 |
Unless you have a means of putting it
out.
| | 01:28 |
Also, in order to keep these pretty
secure while they're burning.
| | 01:32 |
I bought this earthquake putty, it's
something that they use to, it's like a
| | 01:36 |
sticky material.
It just helps keep things in place your
| | 01:41 |
vases on shelves, your snail candles on
rock, what have you.
| | 01:46 |
So, we are using some safety precaution,
this is just one of many staging tools
| | 01:50 |
that I like using.
But this is what we're using out here, it
| | 01:53 |
doesn't hurt the environment.
So I think we're ready to take a couple
| | 01:57 |
of shots.
And again, I'm really looking at the
| | 02:00 |
line that I'm creating, with the snail
shells.
| | 02:04 |
But also the line of the rock behind it
that occurs naturally.
| | 02:08 |
And what I'm looking for in these photos,
when the candles are lit.
| | 02:12 |
They really illuminate the coil.
The little, the, the spiral in the shell
| | 02:15 |
of the snail shell.
So, I love how that looks.
| | 02:19 |
So I'm just going to get really close in
here.
| | 02:22 |
And take a couple more shots.
(audio playing)
| | 02:23 |
Oh, I love it.
(audio playing) This is really my favorite way to
| | 02:31 |
show off a craft that I've made a lot of.
Especially when.
| | 02:39 |
you can draw the viewer's attention to a
specific aspect of the crafts.
| | 02:49 |
I definitely recommend using lines in
your craft photography.
| | 02:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using and recognizing the rule of thirds| 00:01 |
If you handed most people a camera and
asked them to take a picture of
| | 00:04 |
something, chances are they'd take off
the lens, walk right up to it, and shoot
| | 00:07 |
it straight on.
And while that's all well and good for a
| | 00:11 |
snapshot, your craft photography deserves
so much more than that.
| | 00:14 |
So we're here in nature right now, this
beautiful setting, and what we're going to
| | 00:18 |
do today is take some really great shots
of our crafts.
| | 00:21 |
We've made these beautiful terariums, and
they kind of reflect the area that we're
| | 00:25 |
shooting in.
So, I thought it would be great to place
| | 00:28 |
them all on this stump and really get
some interesting compelling angles.
| | 00:32 |
And I'm all about angles, because
everywhere you look you see a lot of
| | 00:36 |
craft photos, product photos that are
just really kinda straight on or straight above.
| | 00:41 |
And that really works well with
somethings, but when you've got a setting
| | 00:45 |
like this you just have to take advantage
of it.
| | 00:49 |
So what we're going to do is just take a
couple of pictures and it's, it's, you
| | 00:52 |
know we're out in nature so it's more
about the light and we got some
| | 00:56 |
reflection and we got all kinds of things
to deal with.
| | 01:01 |
But we're prepared because we've been
watching these videos.
| | 01:04 |
So, first of all I'm just going to take a
couple of angled shots and see what I'm
| | 01:07 |
working with here.
I want to make sure that my light and the
| | 01:10 |
temperature is all working for me.
So let's just take a couple of shots and
| | 01:14 |
see what we've got.
So, I'm going to get down low.
| | 01:17 |
I want to get, like, straight into the
terrariums because it kind of looks like
| | 01:21 |
a little habitat, a little microcosm
inside.
| | 01:24 |
But that's just to start off with.
That's kind of just to establish what
| | 01:29 |
we're working with, so.
(audio playing) And we're using all kinds of
| | 01:33 |
techniques that we've already learned so,
I'm shooting with kind of a middle
| | 01:38 |
shallow depth of field.
The light is perfect right now.
| | 01:43 |
But (audio playing) okay I've started with a
couple of shots straight on but now I
| | 01:46 |
want to see what else I can do.
So, I'm going to tilt my camera, tilt my
| | 01:50 |
body, kind of work around the craft and
really try to make the most of it.
| | 01:54 |
I want to show dimension, get all the way
around.
| | 01:58 |
We've got these glass globes so you can
really see through in different
| | 02:00 |
directions and I also kinda just want to
give you a new perspective.
| | 02:04 |
So, let's see.
Some angles, (audio playing) that look nice, get
| | 02:08 |
really close and fill the frame (audio playing)
and there is a reflection of kind of the
| | 02:14 |
tree top, the canopy over here but I like
it, I'm going to leave it in because it
| | 02:19 |
really shows you that we're not in a
studio.
| | 02:25 |
Some above.
(audio playing) And your craft is going to be different.
| | 02:29 |
It's going to be a different size, a
different shape, probably made out of
| | 02:33 |
different materials.
So, just take into consideration what
| | 02:37 |
it's made out of, where you're shooting
and really just play around with it.
| | 02:43 |
I'm going to take a lot of shots because
I don't know which angle is going to be
| | 02:47 |
the best until I get back and download
these.
| | 02:52 |
(audio playing) Another thing that I'm finding is
that I'm creating lines and I'm also
| | 02:56 |
seeing some rule of thirds and some of
the other things that we've learned so
| | 03:03 |
Okay so what ever shots you end up with I
really hope you had a great time and
| | 03:07 |
really got the most out of it by moving
around your subject working your
| | 03:11 |
different angles.
And giving yourself a different
| | 03:18 |
perspective, as well as your viewers.
Thanks a lot.
| | 03:45 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating clean and zen images| 00:02 |
I really enjoy shooting photographs of my
crafts on a nice clean white zem like background.
| | 00:08 |
And what I mean by zem like background,
is simply setting a stage that is so pure
| | 00:12 |
and so airy.
That when you look at the photo of the
| | 00:15 |
craft you just feel like you can breathe
a little bit easier if there's a flow of
| | 00:19 |
air that goes around the craft.
There's not a lot of contrast, but, what
| | 00:25 |
contrast there is is really highlighting
the fine detail of the craft itself.
| | 00:30 |
So, now when I'm shooting craft
photography in this way, I typically like
| | 00:35 |
to shoot in a very bright white room.
Or in a light box that I've created, or
| | 00:42 |
on a piece of white foam core.
And I typically set my camera either it's
| | 00:47 |
manual mode or to apurture priority mode.
On a tripod just so I can be sure that
| | 00:53 |
I'm getting a really nice amount of light
coming into my camera.
| | 00:59 |
And most of all, I want to remember not
to ever have direct sunlight falling on
| | 01:02 |
my subject.
Just high, high reflective light, or
| | 01:06 |
highly diffused light.
That's going to just bath my craft in a nice
| | 01:10 |
bright light, and make it look really,
really nice.
| | 01:14 |
Another thing I want to keep an eye on is
keeping a very clean background.
| | 01:18 |
So I'm always careful to make sure that
I've removed any clutter that's in the background.
| | 01:23 |
If there are any little scrapes or
smudges on the paint or on the backdrop
| | 01:27 |
I'm using.
I'm sure to go through and clean those up
| | 01:30 |
in my image editing software after I've
taken the photograph.
| | 01:35 |
Now, like I mentioned, this technique is
also often used in food photography and
| | 01:39 |
this is actually a photograph of a
Pavlova I made not too long ago.
| | 01:43 |
And I couldn't resist shooting it on a
bright white background, because I really
| | 01:47 |
wanted to accent the fragility of the
dessert.
| | 01:51 |
And it's got a very similar relationship
to the terrarium we just looked because
| | 01:55 |
that glass globe also had a very fragile
look to it.
| | 01:59 |
And this, this does as well, so really
highlighting little textures, little
| | 02:04 |
cracks in your craft.
Or just fine little details that kind of
| | 02:09 |
just show off how airy and light it is
are really going to be accentuated on a
| | 02:13 |
white clean zen like background.
Now while the two examples we just looked
| | 02:19 |
at had an awful lot of white in them.
I have achieved clean and zen images
| | 02:24 |
using a lot of color as well in fact its
a technique that I like to use when I'm
| | 02:28 |
shooting craft.
That I really want to tell more of a
| | 02:32 |
story to and in this photograph this is a
tabletop water garden I made out of a
| | 02:36 |
glass an over sized glass.
Coffee cup, and I've got some little
| | 02:41 |
miniature tarot in here, I've got some
water lettuce.
| | 02:45 |
And this is a side shot, so you're mostly
just seeing the white curtain behind the glass.
| | 02:51 |
You're just seeing the very delicate
outline of the glass, the water, the way
| | 02:55 |
the roots are playing around within the
water.
| | 02:58 |
And it overall has a very clean and crisp
feeling.
| | 03:01 |
But even when I shot this craft from a
three quarters angle, well you see much
| | 03:06 |
more color and a few more distractions in
the background.
| | 03:11 |
I think it still really achieves the zen
and clean feeling simply because of the
| | 03:15 |
nature of the craft itself.
Having a little tabletop water garden
| | 03:20 |
takes you to another space.
I wouldn't say it's a craft that requires
| | 03:25 |
this type of photography, but I certainly
think it doesn't hurt any.
| | 03:29 |
I think it really helps bring out the
calm and serene feeling of the craft.
| | 03:34 |
So, by trying to minimize some of the
clutter in the background.
| | 03:38 |
Keeping an eye on your staging, and also
just making sure that you've got an
| | 03:42 |
exposure that's just this side of
underexposed.
| | 03:45 |
I'm not saying you want to totally
underexposed photograph.
| | 03:49 |
But when I'm shooting clean and zen I
like to keep it very white, very light,
| | 03:53 |
very airy.
And not a whole lot of contrast if I can
| | 03:57 |
help it.
Hopefully these images have helped
| | 04:01 |
inspire you and will encourage you to
take photographs of your crafts that are
| | 04:06 |
clean and zen and feel airy and light.
| | 04:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| "How'd they do that?": Taking process shots| 00:02 |
I started my craft blog in part because I
love crafting and trying new things, but
| | 00:06 |
I also wanted to share my experiences,
the successful crafts, the craft fails,
| | 00:10 |
and all the teachable moments in between.
So it was important for me to present the
| | 00:16 |
majority of my projects with very
detailed instructions.
| | 00:20 |
I am a visual leaner I think a lot of
crafters art, so if you are hearing more
| | 00:24 |
than a couple of steps in your tutorials
process shots are critical for keeping
| | 00:28 |
readers engaged and keeping steps clear,
when you are taking process shots and by
| | 00:32 |
that I mean detail photos of every step.
I have four tips that seem to work really
| | 00:39 |
well for me and for my readers Step one,
is take photos at every critical point in
| | 00:44 |
the process, even the tough ones.
Shoot the entire process of a craft, from
| | 00:50 |
the very beginning to the very end.
And choose the most visually descriptive
| | 00:54 |
and compelling images to share with
readers.
| | 00:57 |
Steps two and three, number and label
your shots.
| | 01:02 |
Blog readers usually read more than just
one blog, so chances are your content
| | 01:05 |
could occasionally be getting skimmed by
readers.
| | 01:08 |
By adding numbers and clear instructions
or even just labels on each picture,
| | 01:12 |
readers can asses whether your craft is
something that they have the skill level
| | 01:16 |
or interest in trying.
And adding text is now easier than ever,
| | 01:21 |
I'm about to show you how I add numbers
and labels in Photoshop there are lots of
| | 01:25 |
free and really cheap options that you
can use as well.
| | 01:30 |
Photoshop elements, picture costa,
picnic, photo scape, use whatever your
| | 01:33 |
budget allows whatever you fill
comfortable with.
| | 01:37 |
Okay, so I'm scrolling through my blog
right now showing you all the steps on
| | 01:41 |
how to make candles out of recycled gum
tins, pretty great, right?
| | 01:46 |
Okay, let's get started on how to add
text and numbers to the photographs.
| | 01:53 |
First of all, I open all of my images in
Photoshop.
| | 01:57 |
Now, I'm just going to click through here
and show you.
| | 02:00 |
We just went through the blog, and maybe
because you saw it in context you knew
| | 02:03 |
what all of the images were, but if you'd
never made candles before, you would have
| | 02:07 |
no idea.
Like, I had no idea the first time I made
| | 02:11 |
candles, that these are giant blocks of
beeswax or that this is melting candle wax.
| | 02:16 |
It could just be a gigantic bowl of
butter.
| | 02:19 |
So, by adding these little itty-bitty
helpers, labels, descriptors, what every
| | 02:22 |
you're comfortable with, it really does
make the process more clear.
| | 02:27 |
Okay, that said, I'm going to start with my
first image.
| | 02:30 |
Like I said in the first step, take every
single shot, as many shots as you
| | 02:34 |
possibly can along the way.
So, I even start with what my materials
| | 02:39 |
look like when I'm starting out with a
craft.
| | 02:42 |
And like I said, I've got two blocks of
beeswax.
| | 02:45 |
Right here, I've got some wick thread.
I've got little metal wick holders, my
| | 02:51 |
recycled gum tin, a pair of pliers, and a
pair of scissors, but what I don't have
| | 02:56 |
is any kind of visual aid no real help
here.
| | 03:01 |
So, I'm just going to go ahead and select my
type tool.
| | 03:03 |
It's over here in my toolbox.
It's the T, stands for type and I'm just
| | 03:07 |
going to click directly.
I think this is probably a good place.
| | 03:12 |
So, you can see I've got a little
blinking cursor here and I'm just going to
| | 03:15 |
start typing.
Step one, gather the materials.
| | 03:24 |
Okay, so I've just typed this out, and I
can see that I'm typing here in Helvetica
| | 03:28 |
bold, and for the header for step one, I
think that looks great.
| | 03:34 |
But I don't think I want to have such a
bold font for my description, I'd like my
| | 03:39 |
step to have a, more of a presence than,
than actually the words.
| | 03:44 |
So, I'm just going to change that to
Helvetica light, see how that looks, and
| | 03:48 |
yeah, I like that.
I'm going to drag that down a little bit, I
| | 03:51 |
even think that that's well-positioned.
So, looks good to me, and when I added
| | 03:55 |
the type tool, you can see over here,
that another layer was added.
| | 04:00 |
We've got out background layer, which is
the image that we just typed right over,
| | 04:03 |
and then we've got our type layer here.
Now, I'm going to make a confession, I'm a
| | 04:08 |
little bit lazy when it comes to
Photoshop.
| | 04:11 |
So, I know that I have five or six more
photos that I want to add descriptions to.
| | 04:15 |
I'm just going to take my Type tool and
select everything I just typed because
| | 04:19 |
you know I like the white text, I like
the bold header and I like the lightness
| | 04:24 |
of the text below so I am just going to hit
Command C on a Mac or Control C on a PC.
| | 04:34 |
Come over to my step two, and let's see,
I think this middle spot might be a good
| | 04:38 |
place, so I'm going to grab my text tool yet
again, place it right where I want it,
| | 04:43 |
and then Cmd+V, or Ctrl+V on a PC will
Paste, or you know, we could come up here
| | 04:47 |
to Edit and then Paste right there.
So now I've got my step one on my step
| | 04:56 |
two picture.
All I have to do is go through and
| | 04:59 |
highlight step one, change that to step
two and create a new label for my second image.
| | 05:06 |
So, I am going to call this, prepare the
tins.
| | 05:11 |
Now, you might notice that my
descriptions are actually a little bit
| | 05:15 |
vague and that's okay, especially with
this one.
| | 05:19 |
I just went through and told you what all
of these materials were and then I went
| | 05:22 |
ahead and I only labelled it gather the
materials.
| | 05:24 |
Well I still want my blog readers to read
my blog, so I don't want to give away the
| | 05:28 |
whole farm just in my label, but I do
want to make it enticing enough that
| | 05:31 |
they'll say, okay, well, what the heck is
that thing, so maybe I should read the
| | 05:34 |
blog and find out.
Okay, so now I've got these two different
| | 05:40 |
images, they both have two layers, I
don't want to save this as a PDF I just
| | 05:44 |
want to save it as a JPEG.
So I'm going to go File > Save As and I am
| | 05:48 |
just going to Drop Down to JPEG and hit
Save.
| | 05:52 |
Perfect, done and done.
By selecting JPEG, it compressed the two
| | 06:00 |
layers for me here, the typed layer and
the background layer And now that image
| | 06:05 |
is good to go and I can upload it to my
blog, it's so easy.
| | 06:11 |
And with the applications I mentioned
earlier, Photoshop Elements, Picasa,
| | 06:15 |
Picnic, Photoscape, they all have really
similar interfaces so again, you don't
| | 06:19 |
have to spend a tonne of money just to
add text and numbers to your photos but I
| | 06:23 |
totally encourage you to do so.
Okay, step 4.
| | 06:30 |
I'm going to close this, and go back to the
blog.
| | 06:31 |
Let's hang on one quick second.
Okay, we're back at the blog.
| | 06:36 |
Step 4, open and close your posts with a
photograph of the finished product.
| | 06:42 |
Showing a reader an image of a burning
candle.
| | 06:45 |
Is something that they can envision in
their own home.
| | 06:47 |
If I had started my post with a photo of
all the raw materials, readers might be
| | 06:51 |
turned off by that.
They might think that it's a headache,
| | 06:55 |
it's too much work and just keep on
skimming and go right to the next blog.
| | 06:59 |
But when I show the process, ooh, pretty
burning candle, that would look great in
| | 07:03 |
my house.
And then we scroll down, we see step 1,
| | 07:07 |
2, 3, it's only a few steps.
How hard could it bee?
| | 07:10 |
Here's another finished product.
It's not the same photograph but it's the
| | 07:14 |
same principal.
It's a finished, complete tin.
| | 07:17 |
It looks great.
It's a nice, lovely, burning candle.
| | 07:20 |
Yeah, I think, I think that helps.
I think blog readers see that and they
| | 07:24 |
think I can do that too.
So those are four steps to you.
| | 07:28 |
Step one, try to take photographs at
every critical point in the process, even
| | 07:32 |
the hard ones.
Two and three, number and label your
| | 07:35 |
shots, regardless of the, regardless of
the software you have, I bet you can do it.
| | 07:41 |
I think you can even do it in Word.
And step four, Open and Close your pose
| | 07:46 |
with the finished product shot it will
absolutely be rewarding in the end.
| | 07:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The benefits of using models| 00:02 |
I want to talk about using live models for
your Craft Photography.
| | 00:05 |
Now, if you are a crafter who makes
wearable things, like jewelry, sewing
| | 00:09 |
things like dresses or aprons, any kind
of accessories, hats, what have you, it's
| | 00:14 |
always a good idea to think about showing
the craft on an actual person.
| | 00:21 |
On screen right now we have two different
pieces of needle felted jewelry.
| | 00:25 |
There's this, sort of Wilma Flinstone
looking pearl necklace, and then this
| | 00:29 |
brightly colored other thing.
It could be a smaller necklace, it could
| | 00:33 |
be a bracelet.
I'm not sure, but I like the way they look.
| | 00:37 |
Right off the bat though, I'm not getting
a whole lot of information about these
| | 00:42 |
two crafts.
Now, by switching over and finding a
| | 00:46 |
photograph of a live model wearing one of
these pieces of jewelry, you're already
| | 00:50 |
finding out a lot more about what's going
on.
| | 00:55 |
So this white piece, while maybe
initially it looked like a much larger
| | 00:58 |
necklace you can see here that a child is
wearing it so now a few things are going
| | 01:02 |
through my head is this only a child's
necklace is this something that maybe I
| | 01:06 |
can wear as a bracelet?
But right off the bat, you can tell scale
| | 01:12 |
of something.
And that's really important because,
| | 01:15 |
while you're selling your crafts online,
I'm sure you're writing out the important
| | 01:19 |
details like what it's made of, what
sizes it's available in.
| | 01:24 |
But chances are people are just going to be
skimming through photographs online and
| | 01:28 |
they won't have a lot of time to really
read the detail.
| | 01:32 |
So if something jumps out and grabs them,
you want to give them as much information
| | 01:35 |
as possible right off the bat.
So, scale is going to be one of the most
| | 01:38 |
important things.
Now another reason you might show a live
| | 01:43 |
model wearing your craft, is just to show
how it's worn.
| | 01:47 |
This is a photograph I took of a headband
I was making, but if you just looked at
| | 01:51 |
this photo, mm-hm, you might not really
know what's going on and what all this
| | 01:55 |
droopy material is.
So it's helpful to see it on an actual
| | 02:00 |
person so that you can see oh, okay I get
it, that's a headband and I'm seeing some
| | 02:04 |
other things happening in the photograph.
There's a Christmas wreath back here so
| | 02:10 |
now this sort of looks like a mistletoe
headband to me.
| | 02:13 |
Very cute.
This cute girl's about to get herself a
| | 02:15 |
little kiss.
And it's very, it just puts the whole
| | 02:18 |
thing in context.
But it also tells a little bit more of
| | 02:21 |
the story behind what the craft is.
So, that's another good thing.
| | 02:25 |
So, we've already shown scale, and then
in this movie, just to give more detail
| | 02:29 |
about what exactly this craft is, and how
it's supposed to be worn.
| | 02:33 |
Finally, it's sometimes a really good
idea just to show your product photo of
| | 02:37 |
whatever you've made, like these knitted
hats here.
| | 02:41 |
But also, by showing it on a person, it
actually makes viewers want it more
| | 02:45 |
because they can envision themselves,
wearing your particular craft.
| | 02:50 |
So, here I'm modeling this knitted hat I
made and, I also wanted to add a human
| | 02:54 |
touch to this by putting myself in it, I
liked kind of the humor of the contrast
| | 02:57 |
between the blond braids and my regular
brunette hair.
| | 03:03 |
And so, by having this human touch
viewers can see this, and when they see
| | 03:07 |
something on somebody else, they can more
easily picture themselves wearing it.
| | 03:13 |
So the chances are greater that when
somebody sees a hat on somebody else,
| | 03:16 |
they'll say, oh okay, that looks really
cute, but I have blonde hair, and it's
| | 03:19 |
curly, so maybe I would look for this hat
with some other different color of braid,
| | 03:23 |
or some different style, or maybe that's
exactly what I was looking for, and I'm
| | 03:26 |
really glad I got to see it on this
brunette model.
| | 03:32 |
Either way, showing a model wearing
something is going to encourage a sale
| | 03:36 |
because it's just human nature.
When we see something on somebody else,
| | 03:40 |
we can picture ourselves in it and then
we kind of want it more.
| | 03:45 |
Now, whenever possible, I try to use
variety of models varying ages, varying
| | 03:50 |
skin tones, genders.
I don't like just using myself all the time.
| | 03:54 |
I don't want people to get tired of my
face, and I don't want to you know, over
| | 03:58 |
saturate my blog or store with pictures
of just me.
| | 04:02 |
I'd like to address a larger audience, so
I recommend using as many of your friends
| | 04:06 |
and different people as you can find, but
like I said, if you don't have access to
| | 04:10 |
a lot of people, use yourself, because it
will do a great job showing the scale of
| | 04:14 |
an object, showing how it fits, and
showing how it looks on somebody else,
| | 04:17 |
will make a perspective shopper want it
even more.
| | 04:24 |
So I highly encourage you whenever
possible, to use models, even if it's not
| | 04:28 |
the whole person it's just showing a ring
on a hand, or a watch.
| | 04:33 |
It'll really help boost sales of your
craft.
| | 04:36 |
And it'll make for an interesting series
of photographs.
| | 04:39 |
So, there you have it, a few reasons to
use live models in your Craft Photography.
| | 04:47 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting your crafts in the great outdoors| 00:01 |
Overcast days are not the best for going
to the beach, but they're fantastic for
| | 00:05 |
shooting photos of your crafts outside.
All the clouds in the sky diffuse the
| | 00:10 |
light that comes down, and it makes it
perfect for shooting crafts because
| | 00:13 |
there's no hard shadows.
Everything is nice and soft.
| | 00:16 |
It's like having your own personal
diffuser right over your crafts.
| | 00:19 |
So the only thing that we need to
consider, though, is that because there
| | 00:23 |
is a little bit less light, we probably
want to use a tripod and maybe consider
| | 00:26 |
bumping up the ISO a little bit.
Not so much that we get some noise and
| | 00:31 |
grain, but just enough so that we can get
a really good shot.
| | 00:35 |
(audio playing) It looks so nice.
What I really like about this, first of
| | 00:39 |
all we're out in nature here we got these
little wooden necklaces and its a perfect
| | 00:43 |
compliment to this lovely tree that we're
hanging it on, but it's also giving it a
| | 00:47 |
really nice background.
I'm using kind ofSOUND a shallow depth
| | 00:52 |
of field, so that the background just
sort of fades away a little bit, and that
| | 00:56 |
is definitely giving it a nice soft
offset here to that, so that you can pick
| | 01:01 |
up the texture here within the wood.
We've got these fine little grains and
| | 01:08 |
nice high polish.
I mean, they're handmade necklaces, so
| | 01:11 |
you really want to make them look nice.
So in this light.
| | 01:17 |
I'm shooting at 1 60th, and my ISO is at
200 right now, which is actually perfect.
| | 01:23 |
It's not it's not bright at all out here.
It is pretty late in the day actually but
| | 01:27 |
the shot that I'm getting is, is very
complimentary and what's great about this
| | 01:30 |
is that it kind of represents a point of
purchase sale like you might see in the store.
| | 01:36 |
So if somebody, a perspective shopper
perhaps saw a photo like this then that
| | 01:41 |
they would imagine this necklace.
In their home, maybe, hanging on their
| | 01:45 |
necklace tree.
And will probably think a lot more about
| | 01:47 |
it, like where it came from, why it was
made, and those are the things you want
| | 01:49 |
your buyers to be thinking about, like
the care and the craft that goes into it.
| | 01:54 |
So, shooting it outside, and taking
consideration of the light and the
| | 02:03 |
surroundings will give you that extra
special touch when you're shooting your crafts.
| | 02:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a "habitat" with site-specific shooting| 00:01 |
I'm here walking around this beautiful
conifer forest.
| | 00:05 |
The birds are singing.
The light is just dappled and really
| | 00:08 |
sweet and romantic.
It's actually a great spot to create a
| | 00:12 |
habitat shot for one of your crafts.
Now we're in here in this great nature
| | 00:16 |
setting, and if you're a crafter who
makes things that kind of reflect the
| | 00:20 |
nature around you.
Then it's really a good idea to kind of
| | 00:24 |
put your, your hand crafted item, in a
setting that kind of gives it more
| | 00:28 |
context, like a forest.
So I have my craft here today, and it's
| | 00:32 |
this little needle felted owl that I
made.
| | 00:36 |
And the reason I want to make a habitat
shot is because it, its kind of similar
| | 00:40 |
to the big window displays in an
apartment or a department store.
| | 00:47 |
I'm a total sucker for those I can just
be walking by with no interest at all in
| | 00:50 |
going shopping.
And if I see a nice dress and it's on a
| | 00:54 |
mannequin, and it's next to a picnic
basket.
| | 00:57 |
I can totally picture myself in that
dress, at that picnic.
| | 01:01 |
So, by taking a photograph of your craft,
in a natural habitat.
| | 01:05 |
This is you opportunity to create a
little mini window display for your
| | 01:09 |
online craft store.
So, I want to take some shots of my owl and
| | 01:13 |
we've got some interesting things going
on here.
| | 01:17 |
I was looking for a spot that I could set
up.
| | 01:20 |
You can see the owl is got a little tree
that's part of his little home there.
| | 01:24 |
And I've made a little nest for him just
to make it look a little bit more like it
| | 01:27 |
would in nature if this was a real owl.
We've also in our frame I've took a
| | 01:32 |
couple of test shots before we got going
here.
| | 01:36 |
AndSOUND there's a really nice little
yellow flower, it's like a dandelion, in
| | 01:41 |
the background.
So we have a very nice composition with
| | 01:45 |
this fallen log.
So there's actually, this log is creating
| | 01:49 |
a nice line for us.
But the whole picture is sort of framed,
| | 01:52 |
by the logSOUND.
There's a tree trunk in the back, a nice
| | 01:57 |
little splash of yellow color from the
flower.
| | 02:00 |
And then you've got the little white of
the "rock eggs."
| | 02:03 |
So, I'm just taking a few more shots,
here, but there's some interesting things
| | 02:07 |
going on.
Since we're in this forest, there is kind
| | 02:10 |
of half sun and half shade.
So, it kind of took me a little bit to
| | 02:14 |
figure out what kind of exposure I was
looking for.
| | 02:18 |
Because there is so much leaf litter
behind my owl.
| | 02:21 |
And there's a lot of new growth.
There's, kind of, a, kind of a pattern in
| | 02:26 |
the background that could potentially
conflict with my craft itself.
| | 02:32 |
And while I'm creating this habitat, I
don't want it to overtake the craft itself.
| | 02:37 |
So, I have a shallow depth of field.
My camera is actually at F4 and I have to
| | 02:42 |
boost up my ISO just a little bit to
accommodate for the low light.
| | 02:49 |
Anyone who use a flash or anything, but I
could bring out my tripod if I was really
| | 02:53 |
uncertain about the exposure.
And I wanted to do some bracketing just
| | 02:58 |
to make sure that I was getting a good
range of lights and darks.
| | 03:02 |
So I'm just going to take some couple of
shots here make sure I'm happy with what
| | 03:06 |
I've got.
And one other nice thing here is there's
| | 03:09 |
a little patch of sunlight behind the
owl.
| | 03:12 |
And that's actually giving a really cool
back light to the owl.
| | 03:14 |
So it's got almost a little halo around
it, which even offsets it from the
| | 03:18 |
background even more, which is really
excitingSOUND.
| | 03:22 |
Yeah, perfect.
So, obviously as you are creating a
| | 03:27 |
habitat, a habitat shot for your own
craft.
| | 03:30 |
It's not going to be necessarily a forest,
but think about what you've made.
| | 03:34 |
And what kind of setting you can create
for it to give it a little bit more personality.
| | 03:39 |
Tell a story, put it in context and
really make it likable and relatable.
| | 03:44 |
And as you take your photos, think about
the composition, the textures, what kind
| | 03:48 |
of you depth of field you might need.
And as you do that you're going to be
| | 03:51 |
creating photographs for your online
store that really do make for a great
| | 03:55 |
online window display.
And that's going to catch attention and
| | 04:03 |
potentially get more sales.
| | 04:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Anthropomorphizing: When, where, why?| 00:00 |
If you're a crafter with the sense of
humor, chances are you've made a little
| | 00:04 |
something in your past that has a bit
more personality than maybe some of your
| | 00:08 |
other things.
Now, what we have on screen is not a
| | 00:13 |
complicated craft.
This is something I came up with while I
| | 00:17 |
was on a hike, had some kids at the camp
with us so, we glued on some googly eyes
| | 00:21 |
onto some rocks and wala.
We had a really fun craft, because, all
| | 00:27 |
of a sudden, our natural elements around
us had so much more personality and
| | 00:31 |
that's actually called
anthropomorphizing.
| | 00:35 |
When you're giving human characteristics
to something that's inanimate, it's not
| | 00:39 |
alive, and it normally would not have
human characteristics.
| | 00:43 |
So, that's the case with these little
googly eyed rocks.
| | 00:47 |
Now, I think that they already have a lot
of personality, but it seems like there's
| | 00:51 |
more of a story they want to tell us.
And as craft photographers, it's our
| | 00:56 |
responsibility to figure out what exactly
that story is.
| | 01:00 |
So, there are a couple of things that we
can do to really bring our
| | 01:03 |
anthropomorphized crafts to life within
our image editing software, and one of
| | 01:08 |
the ways is pretty straightforward.
Now, already, these rocks are in a great
| | 01:15 |
setting, they're obviously in a rocky
area and you can tell that they're in the
| | 01:19 |
desert, but you can't really tell what's
going on in the background.
| | 01:25 |
I don't know what these little sloopy
lines are back here, but I want us to
| | 01:29 |
take these rocks and put them in a new
setting within this same environment just
| | 01:34 |
so that they looked more at home.
So, just picking up my craft and walking
| | 01:41 |
around camp, I found another location
that I thought was more suitable for a
| | 01:45 |
habitat photograph.
So whether the second location is more or
| | 01:50 |
less successful than the first location,
I kind of like the composition of this a
| | 01:53 |
little bit better.
I like the little angle of grass here, I
| | 01:57 |
like the blue sky and the red rock over
here, and I like that all of my little
| | 02:01 |
rocks are huddled together.
This one with the two big eyes looks like
| | 02:06 |
he's just seen a ghost.
This one maybe has a concussion, I don't
| | 02:10 |
know what's going on with him.
And this one, just, I don't know what his
| | 02:14 |
expression is exactly, but I like it.
And I want to further exploit the
| | 02:19 |
adventures of my little googly eyed
rocks.
| | 02:22 |
So a second thing that I can do besides
finding new environments and placing my
| | 02:26 |
anthropomorphized rocks in a series of
different settings around their natural
| | 02:30 |
habitat is to add the element of text to
a photograph.
| | 02:37 |
So here, we're back in our first image,
and while I do like the big blue sky in
| | 02:40 |
this image, it definitely needs more, so
this, I think is a great opportunity to
| | 02:44 |
add some text and where there is text
there can be humor.
| | 02:49 |
So I like the song lyric, I want to rock
with you, and I thought it would be
| | 02:52 |
really cute to put it right in the blue
sky, because there is something going on here.
| | 02:58 |
I don't know if it's just because this
rock has a little drippy glue coming down
| | 03:02 |
or if it's just because he got one eye
larger than another.
| | 03:07 |
But there is something kind of sad and
lonely looking about this, this
| | 03:11 |
particular rock, so putting kind of a fun
pop lyric above him, well, it doesn't
| | 03:15 |
necessary lighten the mood that much.
In fact, to me it kind of makes it even,
| | 03:21 |
even a little bit sadder.
I feel like there's even more that we can
| | 03:25 |
do to tell the rest of the story.
And with an anthropomorphized craft, you
| | 03:30 |
really do have an opportunity to tell
more of the story or to just make up any
| | 03:34 |
story you think would be more interesting
and make your craft photo more memorable.
| | 03:40 |
So, the way that I'd like to achieve that
is with the use of extra support graphics.
| | 03:46 |
So I've now removed my text, and I'm
ready to add some graphics.
| | 03:51 |
I know it's really my responsibility and
pleasure to figure out what kind of story
| | 03:56 |
I want to tell and how I'd like to
complete the human characteristics and
| | 04:00 |
the human emotion of my inanimate objects
that look like they have some personality.
| | 04:09 |
And I really find that nothing makes a
person feel more connected to another
| | 04:12 |
being than the common thread of lost
love.
| | 04:16 |
So, I have told a little story here, just
through a couple of sad faces and
| | 04:20 |
expressive eyebrows.
And I thought Bubble, I told the story of
| | 04:24 |
this main rock losing his love to this
background rock and his buddy knows the score.
| | 04:30 |
This guy knows that our smooth operator
here has been caught red-handed if he had
| | 04:39 |
hands with our main character's
girlfriend.
| | 04:47 |
So, just by adding a couple of quick
graphics, they don't need to be high quality.
| | 04:52 |
They just need to be expressive and I
think that these are.
| | 04:55 |
So I continued to tell a story here.
I got my little antimophorphide craft.
| | 05:00 |
I tried to put them in settings where the
viewers can enjoy.
| | 05:04 |
My take on where these rocks may have
been, where they're going, what they're
| | 05:07 |
doing, and what they're thinking, and you
can apply the same theory to any of your
| | 05:11 |
crafts that have some added personality.
Just take a look at them.
| | 05:16 |
Take some photos.
Move them around into different settings
| | 05:19 |
like we mentioned.
Add some text.
| | 05:21 |
And then, really just go for it.
Have fun with it.
| | 05:24 |
Play with it.
Add all kinds of graphics.
| | 05:27 |
You can combine text and graphics.
Maybe you want to add an element of animation.
| | 05:32 |
It's really up to you.
But anthropomorphized crafts are so
| | 05:35 |
unique, because they're just so fun and
each one brings its own personality,
| | 05:38 |
whether it's being sad or being scared or
being grouchy.
| | 05:42 |
You really have a lot of wiggled room to
get creative and play with it.
| | 05:47 |
So, I encourage you if you've made a
craft that has some personality, that has
| | 05:50 |
a little face.
Really go for it and get creative.
| | 05:54 |
And probably going to have just as much fun
creating the final image as you are
| | 05:57 |
sharing it with your friends.
So, and hope you just have fun letting go
| | 06:02 |
and really letting the personality of
your individual craft shine.
| | 06:07 |
Your blog readers are going to enjoy it.
If you put this on your online store as a
| | 06:12 |
second or third photograph, I guarantee
you're going to get some smiles.
| | 06:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Equipment List: Making and Buying Helpful ToolsTools for diffusing and reflecting light| 00:01 |
When you're shooting your crafts outside,
you're going to encounter all different
| | 00:04 |
kinds of lighting scenarios.
And knowing whether you need to add some
| | 00:07 |
light to your craft or diffuse the light
that's above it, is going to be a huge
| | 00:10 |
benefit to you.
But there's also all kinds of options as
| | 00:14 |
far as what materials you use to add or
subtract lighting.
| | 00:18 |
And we're going to talk about a couple of
those right now.
| | 00:21 |
They don't necessarily need to be really
expensive professional tools.
| | 00:24 |
You probably have a lot of these already
just around your house.
| | 00:27 |
For instance, this is a trash bag that I
use for my kitchen but it's also great
| | 00:30 |
for diffusing light.
Check it out.
| | 00:33 |
Right now you can see that the direct
light is just kinda coming down dappled
| | 00:36 |
through the tree.
But when I add this plastic bag, it's
| | 00:40 |
nice and soft, it looks great.
So, I'm just going to take a quick picture
| | 00:44 |
of that and see if it makes a big
difference on my camera and I'm
| | 00:47 |
suspecting it will.
(audio playing)
| | 00:51 |
Oh yeah, that's much better.
So, that's one option.
| | 00:57 |
Another option is using a tea towel that
you might have in your kitchen, or some
| | 01:01 |
bed linens, some muslin, just very thin
gauze.
| | 01:06 |
You can use organic fibers, you can use
polyester-based fibers, anything that's
| | 01:10 |
got a clea-, like a thin white cottony
feeling and you can kind of see through
| | 01:14 |
it when you hold it up to the light, is
going to work really well.
| | 01:19 |
Just to avoid patterns and if it's got a
really deep wrinkle in it, that could
| | 01:22 |
possible cast a shadow, and you don't
want that.
| | 01:25 |
So, keep an eye on the materials you're
using.
| | 01:27 |
If we want to diffuse light, this is an
interesting way to go about it because
| | 01:31 |
it's actually reflecting shadow, and
sometimes you're going to need that.
| | 01:36 |
So.
by having a big piece of black paper
| | 01:38 |
handy, you can really do an interesting
job just working the light and kind of
| | 01:42 |
cutting things down.
It's pretty handy when you're working on
| | 01:46 |
reflective crafts.
So, right now you might not be seeing a
| | 01:48 |
huge difference but it's a handy tool to
have.
| | 01:51 |
And this is just black heavy-stock craft
paper from any art store.
| | 01:55 |
So, another good tool for the toolbox.
Speaking of working from below, adding
| | 02:01 |
light, this is not diffusing.
This adding light because our craft is
| | 02:06 |
just not, this bottom of this tree right
here, it's in some shade.
| | 02:10 |
It could use a little help.
So, this is a piece of foam core, and
| | 02:13 |
you've probably already seen this in the
art store.
| | 02:16 |
It's got this thick layer, of almost a
styrofoam, it's kind of squishy.
| | 02:20 |
And then it's got these two pieces of
laminated cardboard on the outside, or
| | 02:23 |
just heavy paper, rather.
And these are great to keep around
| | 02:27 |
because on windy days they're very
stable, they're very sturdy.
| | 02:31 |
But they're super light, so you can hold
it with one hand and it's not a problem
| | 02:34 |
at all.
So, you can direct the light just like that.
| | 02:38 |
Very nice.
And another (audio playing) homegrown trick is
| | 02:42 |
found in your kitchen.
And this is just using aluminum foil and
| | 02:47 |
wrapping it around a piece of cardboard.
Also super light, super easy, and I'm
| | 02:53 |
sure you already have this.
So, let's take a picture with the owl lit
| | 02:59 |
up with some extra aluminium foil.
There we go.
| | 03:04 |
Nice.
That really adds a little punch.
| | 03:08 |
And it's not expensive and it's just a
really great thing to have around.
| | 03:12 |
So, another option, if you don't want to
mess around with crafting all these
| | 03:16 |
different options for reflecting and
diffusing light, you can buy one of these
| | 03:20 |
nifty 5-in-1 reflector diffusers.
Pop them out like this, and right over
| | 03:26 |
here, there's a zipper with more options
in it.
| | 03:30 |
But this is, you've got some cool great
options here.
| | 03:32 |
You've got the silver reflector, you can
see how that adds some great light.
| | 03:37 |
If you don't want to use silver you can
get kind of a nice warm reflection by
| | 03:41 |
using the gold option.
That makes things look nice and warm,
| | 03:45 |
honey colored.
You can unzip that a little more, show
| | 03:50 |
you better.
(audio playing)
| | 03:52 |
And then, you've also got this great
diffuser inside, so there's all kinds of
| | 03:58 |
things that you can use, if you don't
want to look around your house for some
| | 04:03 |
hand crafted options.
And speaking of handcrafted options,
| | 04:09 |
while we were just sitting here chatting,
I thought of even more.
| | 04:11 |
So, you could use frosted glass if you
wanted to diffuse.
| | 04:14 |
You can use pocket mirrors if you want to
add light.
| | 04:17 |
There's so many different ways that you
can add and subtract lighting from your
| | 04:20 |
outdoor situations.
It's just a matter of thinking about what
| | 04:24 |
materials you have to work with and then
think about your lighting situation.
| | 04:28 |
And if you can get resourceful with what
you've got, your going to get some great
| | 04:32 |
results from your photography outside,
whether its bright light or shade.
| | 04:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Getting resourceful with lighting options| 00:01 |
Before you go out and buy a professional
lighting rig, a whole soft box and
| | 00:04 |
professional lighting equipment, take a
look around your house.
| | 00:09 |
You probably have really cool options for
getting resourceful with the lighting
| | 00:13 |
that you already have, such as candles
some existing and separate flashes.
| | 00:19 |
Desk lamps with these great movable heads
and chop lamps with this nice aluminum
| | 00:24 |
hood, that's going to give a great
reflection.
| | 00:28 |
These different options are great for
shooting just your small crafts in your,
| | 00:33 |
in your private little studio or in your
home made light box, they might not look
| | 00:37 |
like professional gear but they are
usable.
| | 00:42 |
So, when you have these different
situations, there's some things to keep
| | 00:46 |
in mind and one of the things is that a
broader lighting surface is going to give
| | 00:50 |
you a softer light.
So that's one of the reasons that this
| | 00:54 |
professional setup is great.
Right?
| | 00:56 |
It's got this huge surface.
But you can make these little tiny desk
| | 00:59 |
lamps or actually, yeah, you can make
these desk lamps really usable just by
| | 01:03 |
deflecting the light and reflecting it,
you can point it at, another surface.
| | 01:09 |
And then you can see that it'll shine
down, and now this surface is the one
| | 01:12 |
that's lighting the craft, so it's no
longer a spotlight, it's just a much
| | 01:16 |
brighter broader light.
And you can do that with any piece of
| | 01:21 |
paper, aluminum foil.
But also, the same thing is happening
| | 01:24 |
here, where it's got a much wider
surface, so you're going to get a softer
| | 01:27 |
light from something like this versus
something like this.
| | 01:30 |
You can also diffuse the light, and
that's going to make it softer too, so
| | 01:33 |
we've got our handy trash bag somewhere
around here, and we can just put that up.
| | 01:38 |
And that's going to give a nice soft light,
and so diffusing the light or reflecting
| | 01:42 |
the light to make these smaller surfaces
is going to give you a broader surface, and
| | 01:45 |
a softer light.
Another thing about lighting your crafts
| | 01:50 |
specifically, is that if you want to
de-emphasize texture, you would want to
| | 01:53 |
light them from the front.
If you want to really show off a texture,
| | 01:57 |
light your crafts from the side, from
below, from above, it's just like when we
| | 02:01 |
were kids, and you took a flashlight and
put it under your face, it's much more dramatic.
| | 02:07 |
You can see much more shadows on your
face if your flashlight is right
| | 02:10 |
underneath you.
It's the same thing with a craft, so if
| | 02:13 |
you've got something really furry and you
don't want to have all the texture
| | 02:16 |
distracting, just light it straight on.
Same thing with a shinier object, so keep
| | 02:22 |
those things in mind.
Another thing with light is that it has color.
| | 02:27 |
Light might just look white, but I'm sure
you've probably taken a photo inside, and
| | 02:31 |
the light looked kind of green or yellow,
and so there are all these different
| | 02:34 |
light colors within light.
But it's varying between bulbs as well.
| | 02:41 |
So, if when you're in a situation where
you're indoors and you're just trying to
| | 02:45 |
use your existing lighting.
You could always take a look at your camera.
| | 02:50 |
I got the WB here, so I can adjust my
white balance and this is the auto, but
| | 02:54 |
if you've got that yellow green lighing
just keep clicking until you see either
| | 02:58 |
tungsten light or fluorsescent light.
And take some test shots with those and
| | 03:05 |
see how the color changes just within the
natural existing light.
| | 03:09 |
So, you can also manually take your white
balance just to see what color white
| | 03:13 |
light you've got.
In your setting.
| | 03:16 |
And then that's going to determine, how you
edit your photos in your image editing
| | 03:20 |
software later.
And it can determine what kind of shots
| | 03:24 |
you get in this existing shoot.
So I'm going to take a photograph of just
| | 03:27 |
this white piece of paper, and this is
going to be my standard from now on.
| | 03:32 |
And when I'm taking this shot, I want to
make sure that there's nothing else
| | 03:34 |
outside the frame in my view finder.
I only want white in this photograph.
| | 03:38 |
So, quick shot.
Okay.
| | 03:42 |
So now, by coming over here I can come
ahead and show you my custom white balance.
| | 03:47 |
I'm going to set that, and then all my
future shots are going to be with this light.
| | 03:52 |
So, that's the color within the white
light, and a good way for you to keep an
| | 03:56 |
eye on the yellows and the greens and
your tungsten fluorescent lights, but
| | 04:00 |
light also has temperature.
So, while these candles give off a really
| | 04:06 |
nice warm light, they actually have a
much cooler temperature measured in
| | 04:11 |
degrees kelvin.
Whereas, outside, in the bright overcasty
| | 04:16 |
day, that's a great place to shoot
photographs, but that light looks a lot
| | 04:20 |
bluer, a lot cooler.
The temperature is actually much higher.
| | 04:25 |
That's about maybe 6000 degrees kelvin,
while this is more about 1850, 1850
| | 04:30 |
degrees kelvin.
And the reason you need to know that, is
| | 04:35 |
because when you do decide to look for
light bulbs that are mimicking outdoor
| | 04:38 |
lighting, natural lighting, you just want
to think about what temperature Kelvin it is.
| | 04:45 |
So again outside, overcast is a much
higher temperature, and this soft warm
| | 04:50 |
light is a much lower temperature.
And when you do buy your bulbs, you can
| | 04:55 |
see it right here, temperature.
This light bulb right here is 550 kelvin,
| | 04:59 |
so this is pretty close to outdoor light.
And that's just something to think about
| | 05:03 |
when you do decide to make the commitment
and actually buy a bulb.
| | 05:07 |
It's going to recreate those outdoor
settings.
| | 05:09 |
But working with candles, working with
desk lamps, and diffusers, and
| | 05:12 |
reflectors, even working with that
yellowish-green, you now know how to
| | 05:15 |
combat that green and yellow light, and
work with what you've got.
| | 05:19 |
So hopefully, with just these different
lighting options at home, you're going to
| | 05:24 |
get some really great shots, now that
you've got the information you need.
| | 05:29 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The joys of tripods and remote controls| 00:01 |
So there're typically two separate
applications when you might use a tripod,
| | 00:04 |
low light and to take a photograph of
your self and it just so happens that we
| | 00:08 |
have both of the situations right now.
We're in a kind of a shady forest and the
| | 00:13 |
craft that we're going to take a picture
of today is a t-shirt.
| | 00:17 |
So it would not be acceptable for me to
just hold out my hand and take a picture
| | 00:21 |
of myself.
That's fine for snapshots of your friends
| | 00:24 |
but when you're taking a good product
shot that's not going to cut it.
| | 00:27 |
So you need a nice tripod and we've got
one here that's great.
| | 00:30 |
It's got these adjustable legs which is
good.
| | 00:33 |
So that we can make it a little higher a
little shorter.
| | 00:36 |
We can adjust in the center.
Make some horizontal changes, actually
| | 00:43 |
lets see here.
Yep pretty good.
| | 00:46 |
We can make it higher or lower, and what
I'm focusing on right now, you might have
| | 00:52 |
noticed there's a little paper version of
myself over here.
| | 00:59 |
That's actually a focus target that I
have made.
| | 01:02 |
You can google and download your own
focus target, and the purpose of that is
| | 01:05 |
because I'm going to be working over here
at my camera, but I need to know Where
| | 01:08 |
I'm going to be standing, I need to know
what to focus on.
| | 01:13 |
I like to set my camera to manual focus
when I'm taking these self portraits of
| | 01:16 |
crafts, just because if you're using a
remote control or something else and set
| | 01:19 |
it to auto-focus, there's a good chance
you could get a shot of the background
| | 01:23 |
instead of the craft.
So, I've got this lined up I'm going to
| | 01:28 |
turn my camera on and now that we have
our tripod situated and we're focused on
| | 01:32 |
this target over here and again my focus
target were in the middle of the woods so
| | 01:36 |
I just kind of crafted one out of a wire
hanger and some tape.
| | 01:43 |
But you can clip them on, you can use
fishing line.
| | 01:46 |
if you're in a studio, you can attach it
to a tripod or whatever you've got around.
| | 01:52 |
But you really want to have your focus
target, at the same height that you're
| | 01:56 |
at, because that's what you're taking a
photo of.
| | 02:00 |
So our camera is set up.
Our focus target is set up.
| | 02:04 |
How are we going to take this shot?
There's a couple of different things that
| | 02:08 |
we can do.
We have, down in the leaf here, we've got
| | 02:11 |
our remote control in this handy pocket
of my camera strap, that's one option, we
| | 02:15 |
also could use the self timer and set our
camera, and then run out in front of the
| | 02:19 |
focus target and take a picture there.
And then we've got this handy shutter release.
| | 02:27 |
This one's mine, and the cord is not
super long, so it's not going to work for
| | 02:31 |
this, but it might work in other
applications.
| | 02:35 |
So, I'm going to come over here to my
comp, my computer, my camera, make sure
| | 02:39 |
it's on.
And to set it in the proper mode, so that
| | 02:43 |
this remote control will speak to the
sensor in my camera, I need to come over
| | 02:47 |
here and press this little button, and go
from single shooting to self-timer remote
| | 02:51 |
control, your camera might have a
different name for it, just check the
| | 02:55 |
owner manual, a lot of point in shoots
little, compact cameras have this as
| | 02:59 |
well, so I am going to select that.
And it's not on self-timer, so I'm just
| | 03:09 |
going to use my remote control and go
stand in front of the focus target.
| | 03:15 |
Now that I'm over here, there's a couple
other things to think about.
| | 03:18 |
When you are modeling your own craft, you
should direct the shoot as if you were
| | 03:22 |
working with somebody else, an actual
model.
| | 03:27 |
But sometimes the best model that you can
find is the only one that you can find,
| | 03:30 |
and this happens to be me.
So I want to take a nice picture of this
| | 03:34 |
shirt, and in order to do that, I'm not
just going to stand in front of it.
| | 03:38 |
I really want to think about like, an
angle, or how I can make, you know, the
| | 03:41 |
green look nice, or the logo look nice,
so I'm going to kind of work around but I
| | 03:45 |
also want to take note that I don't want
to have this behind me over my shoulder
| | 03:48 |
so I'm going to take a shot with my
remote control.
| | 03:54 |
Take a couple.
Now I'm having some trouble finding my
| | 03:55 |
sensor so you might experience this too,
just know it's part of self photography.
| | 03:56 |
There's a lot of experimenting that goes
along.
| | 04:11 |
In fact, I'm going to double check and
make sure I've even set it correctly.
| | 04:15 |
That could happen (audio playing) let's see,
okay.
| | 04:22 |
There we go, I heard it click.
I'm going to take a look at it by hitting
| | 04:29 |
display and I am not happy with this
picture.
| | 04:34 |
I'm in a strange position and there is a
paper version of me over my shoulder.
| | 04:38 |
So, I'm going to take another one by
setting again to remote control.
| | 04:43 |
Actually this time, I'm going to take a
picture.
| | 04:46 |
In another way.
I'm going to use the self timer.
| | 04:49 |
So you've seen how the remote control
works.
| | 04:51 |
I could take thousands of pictures, and I
should, probably.
| | 04:55 |
When you're shooting crafts, you want to
take as many pictures as possible just so
| | 04:57 |
you can figure out at the end of the day
which one you like the best.
| | 05:01 |
Same goes with remote control.
Just keep snapping away.
| | 05:04 |
So, I've got my remote control, or my
self timer.
| | 05:07 |
I'm going to hit that and click it to ten
seconds, so I have ten seconds to get
| | 05:11 |
over there, get myself situated and get
into a good position, and this is a great
| | 05:14 |
option if you don't have a remote
control, or the shutter release.
| | 05:19 |
Let's see, I have to depress the shutter
before going over there.
| | 05:30 |
This gives me some time to remove my
target.
| | 05:32 |
Get in a good position.
I saw a little orange flashing light and
| | 05:38 |
I heard, I heard the shutter go off.
So let's see.
| | 05:42 |
That's much better.
I was holding this behind my back.
| | 05:45 |
So, I'm going to zoom in.
My shirt is in focus.
| | 05:48 |
I feel really good about that shot.
So, I'm probably going to take a few
| | 05:52 |
more, but there's a good chance I'm
going to use that one.
| | 05:55 |
So, when you're shooting crafts, that you
need to wear, and you're your only model.
| | 06:00 |
Do consider a tripod.
there are actually a couple different
| | 06:04 |
heads that you might want to look into
too, I'm using a 3D head right now.
| | 06:08 |
There's also a ball head that will give
you a little bit more flexibility and versatility.
| | 06:14 |
You want to look at a remote control or
some kind of a remote shutter, or just
| | 06:18 |
using your self-timer, and also figure
out what you can use as far as focus target.
| | 06:25 |
Just so you can make sure that your craft
is in focus.
| | 06:28 |
And it'll really cut back on running
back and forth adjusting the focus.
| | 06:32 |
And you can just focus on the exposure
and the composition of the craft.
| | 06:37 |
So I hope that helps.
| | 06:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Project: Making a tabletop light box| 00:01 |
It's a beautiful sunny day.
In fact, there's not even a cloud in the sky.
| | 00:05 |
And I've got these crafts that I want to
take some pictures of today.
| | 00:09 |
But before I even turn on my camera, I'm
noticing that some bad things are happening.
| | 00:14 |
I see a really really hard shadow here
that's being cast from my vase.
| | 00:19 |
And also.
Where the sun is hitting the the glaze of
| | 00:23 |
this ceramic piece the white is just
blowing out completely.
| | 00:27 |
So, I'm hoping that's not going to show
up on my camera, but I feel like if I can
| | 00:30 |
see it with my eye my camera's going to see
it too.
| | 00:33 |
So I'm just going to take a couple test
shots of these crafts and see what I need
| | 00:36 |
to do from there.
So let's see what we're working with,
| | 00:40 |
(audio playing) Eeh.
(audio playing) Okay so, as I feared, the really
| | 00:44 |
dark and hard shadows that are being
cast, and the white, the bright bright
| | 00:49 |
white reflections are just way too much.
My camera just can't handle it.
| | 00:55 |
So what I need is some diffused light.
And again since its not a single cloud in
| | 01:01 |
the sky I'm just going to move my crafts
away and show you the solution.
| | 01:08 |
We've crafted this light box and this is
actually a super great way to diffuse
| | 01:12 |
light, it's made with some materials that
you're probably familiar with or even
| | 01:17 |
have at home.
(audio playing) It's just a cardboard box.
| | 01:23 |
But what we did, was using a straightedge
we measured and cut out these sides.
| | 01:32 |
Three sides of the box, just regular
pieces with our.
| | 01:36 |
Box cutter orUNKNOWN knife, scissors,
whatever you have, and then we took some
| | 01:41 |
regular house hold kitchen bags that you
would use for waste and we just tape them
| | 01:46 |
over the holes of the box using our green
masking tape.
| | 01:52 |
So what's that allowing us to doSOUND
is just soften up all the light that's
| | 01:56 |
surrounding us right now, and you can see
that even when I, when I turn this box
| | 01:59 |
around, there's a very hard shadow that's
being cast just from the side of the box.
| | 02:06 |
When I turn it completely, the light
inside is much, much softer, so I'm
| | 02:09 |
thinking that if I want to get a really
good shot of this, this light box is
| | 02:12 |
going to help me tremendously.
So I'm just going to place this right inside here.
| | 02:19 |
And yet even as I'm turning it you can
see how the light is being effected.
| | 02:23 |
Sunlight's coming in here, it's coming in
here because we've got a white background.
| | 02:27 |
The backdrop we use is just a matte white
paper, like a wrapping paper or some
| | 02:32 |
craft paper that we cut to size.
And we taped it up on the inside of our
| | 02:36 |
box and then just gently laid it out.
So that white background you're seeing,
| | 02:39 |
that's what that is.
It's, but it's reflecting the light
| | 02:42 |
that's all around us too, so it's helping
us tremendously in addition to just
| | 02:45 |
looking pretty.
So, I'm turning that around, I see that
| | 02:48 |
where I've previously had a super hard
shadow, it's now much much softer.
| | 02:53 |
My reflections on the ceramic glaze are
much nicer.
| | 02:57 |
And I'm hoping that I'm going to get a
really nice shot that reflects the light
| | 03:00 |
that I'm getting now.
(audio playing) Oh, much better.
| | 03:04 |
(audio playing) So because the lights softer I'm
actually even seeing more detail in the
| | 03:10 |
in the glaze that I've got here I've got
some little rough edges and some smooth spaces.
| | 03:20 |
I can see that way better when I put my
vase into the light box because of the
| | 03:23 |
nice soft diffused light.
And even if we weren't working outside in
| | 03:28 |
this great sunny day we could take this
thing inside and you see these regular
| | 03:31 |
shoplights, you can get these at craft
stores, at home improvement stores, you
| | 03:35 |
can probably find them at a garage sale,
they're so common.
| | 03:40 |
So you just clamp them on to your desk or
work surface and maybe use a couple just
| | 03:44 |
to have light coming in from different
directions.
| | 03:48 |
You can play with it and see what kind of
results you're getting.
| | 03:50 |
But you light's going to be much softer,
your craft's going to look way better and
| | 03:53 |
your photographs are going to come out.
Just looking evenly lit and beautiful so
| | 03:58 |
that's how you get great photos in harsh
light just make yourself a light box and
| | 04:02 |
take that super bright light into nice
soft diffused light.
| | 04:07 |
Just a few materials and a little bit of
time and a little crafting you can make
| | 04:11 |
your own light box and diffuse your light
anywhere you go.
| | 04:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Project: Converting your kitchen into a studio| 00:00 |
So I'm here in my kitchen and I'm staging
a photo shoot.
| | 00:06 |
A lot of people might think that you need
a huge space and a lot of expensive
| | 00:09 |
equipment to get a really nice quality
studio shot for your craft photography.
| | 00:14 |
But the truth is I've been shooting in my
kitchen, in my living room, bathroom,
| | 00:17 |
nice bright areas within my house.
Without a lot of extra material and I've
| | 00:22 |
been getting great results.
So I'm going to show you how to do that
| | 00:25 |
right now.
The only materials that I'm using so far
| | 00:27 |
are some masking tape.
And this tape is kind of a high stick
| | 00:31 |
tape, but it doesn't damage the walls,
the paint on your walls, which is
| | 00:34 |
definitely a good thing.
Be sure you read each roll of tape before
| | 00:39 |
you buy one, because some are stickier
than others.
| | 00:42 |
I also have on my camera here A 50mm lens
and these are great for shooting
| | 00:46 |
portraits, for products.
They've a nice depth of field but they
| | 00:51 |
also they kind of mimic the way your eye
looks, its, its a very accurate to the
| | 00:56 |
way a human eye see something so.
Well its a fixed lens and you need to
| | 01:01 |
move around to be sure you're getting
different shots, its, its more of my
| | 01:04 |
favorite lenses, I love shooting with
this.
| | 01:08 |
Finally, I'm going to move my craft and
show you what we're using for our
| | 01:11 |
background today.
So we have three different colors of
| | 01:14 |
bristle board, or high-quality, kind of a
thicker art paper.
| | 01:19 |
And we've got them in white, middle gray,
and black, and I just have them taped up
| | 01:23 |
here underneath my kitchen hood.
So this is easily something that you can
| | 01:29 |
apply to your own kitchen.
I'm just going to pull them down, so you
| | 01:33 |
can see I've got this white one here,
this nice grey, I'm keeping this curve so
| | 01:36 |
there's no hard line.
And then in the back, for another
| | 01:40 |
variation, we've got this nice rich
black.
| | 01:44 |
And that's just really going to make our
little aquarium pop, it's going to look fantastic.
| | 01:50 |
So I'm shooting right now in natural
light.
| | 01:53 |
We had some lighting set up a little
earlier.
| | 01:57 |
Just little things around the house, but
it turns out the light right now is perfect.
| | 02:01 |
So I'm going to replace my backgrounds
and shut off my kitchen light, put my
| | 02:07 |
little fishy right here.
And take some test shots and see what we
| | 02:13 |
can get.
So lets see how we're looking.
| | 02:20 |
Okay pretty good.
Right now I'm shooting I got kind of a
| | 02:27 |
little bit high ISO its about 400 right
now, just because we are inside.
| | 02:33 |
But I'm still really liking what I'm
getting there's not very much grain and
| | 02:37 |
I'm shooting at a nice open aperture 2.8.
And now I'm going to go ahead and see how
| | 02:44 |
that looks on the gray background.
I'm going to show you in a second the
| | 02:49 |
difference in the shots and your going to
be amazed at how different they are.
| | 02:52 |
Let's just remove this completely.
Pull it down.
| | 02:55 |
All right.
We're going to meter, press half-way down
| | 02:55 |
on the shutter speed.
Oh, it looks so good.
| | 02:56 |
There's such a difference that we can
get, just in our kitchen with only a few,
| | 03:05 |
a few different materials.
It's really incredible.
| | 03:13 |
Finally, our last backdrop, It's going to
come all the way down.
| | 03:18 |
It's scaring the kitties, and our final
little gold fish.
| | 03:27 |
All right.
This one is kind of dark, so I might
| | 03:31 |
actually consider adjusting maybe change
the exposure a little bit.
| | 03:37 |
But I just want to show you the
difference this is the black background
| | 03:41 |
we have the gray background.
And then the white we're getting really
| | 03:46 |
interesting results of course we can
improve this.
| | 03:50 |
And any image editing software that we
need to use afterwards.
| | 03:58 |
But just to get some really nice, clean
shots in our kitchen.
| | 04:06 |
We only needed a roll of tape and a few
pieces of paper, and to pay attention to
| | 04:13 |
our lens and we're all set.
| | 04:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Project: Converting your car's trunk into a mobile studio| 00:01 |
It's not often that you see a crafter
just hanging out on the side of the road.
| | 00:05 |
But I made these pressed seaweeds, I went
to the beach, and I collected some
| | 00:08 |
seaweed, and then I pressed it.
And I'm going to sell it online, and I
| | 00:12 |
really need a nice, clean product shot.
So what I'm going to do is convert the trunk
| | 00:16 |
of my car into a mobile photo studio.
So that I can get that really clean,
| | 00:21 |
precise look without investing in studio
time or a lot of really expensive equipment.
| | 00:27 |
So without further adieu, I'm going to put
my crap down and show you what we need to
| | 00:30 |
get going on this project.
First of all, we need our camera.
| | 00:35 |
Digital, SLR, Point-and-Shoot, whatever
you've got access to.
| | 00:39 |
But I've got my Canon, so that's what I'm
going to use.
| | 00:42 |
If you can find a roll of butcher paper
or some kind of matte finish.
| | 00:46 |
wrapping paper, white, craft colored,
gray, black, something in neutral that's
| | 00:51 |
going to really offset your craft's going to be
the best.
| | 00:54 |
This happens to fit perfectly in the
trunk of my car, and if it didn't, just
| | 00:57 |
snip it, it's no problem.
Last but not least, we have our scissors.
| | 01:04 |
Every crafter's favorite tool, and these
clamps that I picked up at the home
| | 01:08 |
improvement store.
These things are invaluable, I use them
| | 01:11 |
all the time.
They come in an assortment of different
| | 01:14 |
sizes, which is perfect.
So let's get going.
| | 01:18 |
All right, so I'm just going to move my
crafts aside put my camera somewhere safe.
| | 01:25 |
And were actually shooting in a pretty
cloudy overcast day.
| | 01:33 |
So I don't really need to do this but I
have a shot before where the sun is just
| | 01:36 |
beating down.
And all you need to is take your clamps
| | 01:40 |
and cut a length of this paper, and you
can attach it.
| | 01:45 |
Most of these hatchback cars have these
perfect little lifts right here.
| | 01:49 |
You can just attach your paper, and it
diffuses the light so well.
| | 01:53 |
You can also attach it to your windows on
the inside.
| | 01:56 |
Again I'm going to skip it right now just
because really cloudy and there's kind of
| | 02:00 |
a chance a storm is coming in.
So we're going to move our clamps, I'm just
| | 02:06 |
going to roll this whole thing.
I'm trying to be gentle so I don't put
| | 02:12 |
too many dents in it.
This is not that super expensive backdrop
| | 02:17 |
paper that you use in a nice photo
studio.
| | 02:20 |
It's just cheap craft paper.
So, I drop that down.
| | 02:26 |
I'm actually going to use my clamps to
hold it down.
| | 02:32 |
(NOISE) And it's so easy I already have a
really clean background.
| | 02:38 |
All right.
So, we're going to grab our image, place it
| | 02:41 |
right here.
And I'm going to work so quickly, because
| | 02:46 |
it actually just started to rain.
But that's fine because our crafts is
| | 02:51 |
protected by our mobile studio.
Get in there.
| | 02:58 |
(NOISE) Okay, so let's see, I'm going to
quickly meter.
| | 03:05 |
All right, that looks pretty good.
(audio playing) Great.
| | 03:14 |
(audio playing) So I'm actually shooting right
now at only a hundredth of a second, and
| | 03:20 |
my ISO is bumped up way high to 3200.
The grain isn't that bad, but it's so
| | 03:26 |
dark right now, and it's actually
raining, that I really want to get a good
| | 03:29 |
low right shot without using any flashes
or anything.
| | 03:33 |
We've got a glass cracked here, so it's
going to make a huge reflection.
| | 03:38 |
But working with what we've got, we have
our two great crafts We're going to get a
| | 03:43 |
really nice, clean, studio-quality shot
that we can put online.
| | 03:50 |
Sell our crafts, and it only cost us a
few dollars for the paper and the clamps,
| | 03:55 |
we probably already had in our garage.
And basically it's compact enough that we
| | 04:02 |
can drive around with all these stuff in
our car.
| | 04:07 |
And take a really nice craft photo on a
coffee break just while we're out roaming
| | 04:12 |
around enjoying the country side.
So its a perfect way to get a good
| | 04:18 |
quality shot with no lot of money, no lot
of time, no lot of space.
| | 04:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Image Editing with PhotoshopCropping and rotating images| 00:02 |
If you're like me, you'll put together
your craft, get it set up with the
| | 00:04 |
perfect background, and then when you go
to take the photograph, either you didn't
| | 00:07 |
notice that there were some things out of
frame that you didn't want, or to get the
| | 00:10 |
perfect angle, you just couldn't take the
photograph without keeping some of the
| | 00:13 |
background visible.
And that's what's happened here.
| | 00:18 |
I've made this little modern home model
Based on an image I saw somewhere.
| | 00:23 |
So I've made this paper house and it's
stuck into this piece of sod with toothpicks.
| | 00:30 |
I've got a big rock for my garden.
It has a mountain in the background.
| | 00:34 |
There's a very serene waterfall falling
down the rock, with a little Q-tip as
| | 00:39 |
some water fuzz and, or water splashes.
And it turns into a river.
| | 00:45 |
And then the whole thing is in front of a
backdrop of a construction paper and wax
| | 00:50 |
paper cloud sky.
So, you kinda see what's going on, but
| | 00:55 |
you can really tell what's going on if
this photograph had been cropped better.
| | 01:01 |
Either I couldn't do it in the
Viewfinder, or maybe I just forgot.
| | 01:04 |
I can't remember at this point, but The
good thing is it's not too late, so this
| | 01:08 |
is a good photo but it would be way more
effective if it were cropped.
| | 01:14 |
Now, I'm also just eyeballing the
photograph, and before I get going, it
| | 01:18 |
kind of looks like my house is sloping to
the left here.
| | 01:22 |
And if that's true, then I'm going to want
to rotate this image as well, because You
| | 01:26 |
go through all the effort of making a
craft and you, when you take your
| | 01:29 |
photograph you don't want it to look like
it's either half done or slopped together.
| | 01:35 |
You really want a photograph it in a way
that reflects the care that you put into
| | 01:39 |
it, so that's what we're going to do.
I'm going to take a look at this photograph
| | 01:43 |
and I think that it would be much more
effective if it were cropped and rotated
| | 01:47 |
and we're going to rotate it first before we
crop it because.
| | 01:51 |
When we rotate it, and then crop it.
Cropping is removing part of the image,
| | 01:56 |
so we want to start out with as much data
as possible.
| | 01:59 |
So that's what we're going to do right now.
So, to rotate your image, I like to start
| | 02:03 |
out by showing my ruler because that's
going to give me a nice guideline to work with.
| | 02:09 |
And you can do that on a Mac by hitting
command R and then you're going to see this
| | 02:13 |
ruler appears at the top of your work
space.
| | 02:16 |
No if you click within this ruler and
pull down a guide will appear and these
| | 02:20 |
agree I use these all the time that is
really helpful for keeping an eye on the
| | 02:25 |
setup of your image.
So I'm pulling it right down here to the
| | 02:31 |
top of my roof and I can see.
That it's not a level roof.
| | 02:36 |
So, I'm going to pull it down actually right
here and then I'm going to select my
| | 02:40 |
entire image by hitting Command A on a
Mac, Control A on a PC.
| | 02:46 |
So, you can see that this little line has
appeared here, these little, this row of
| | 02:50 |
dancing ants.
So, that means that my image is selected
| | 02:53 |
and I'm going to hit Command T on a Mac
and Control T on a PC.
| | 02:58 |
And now there's a bounding box all around
my image.
| | 03:01 |
See these little?
Squares that are at the corners and in
| | 03:04 |
the center of my image.
So now I can transform it.
| | 03:09 |
Meaning I can stretch it out, I can make
it smaller, but when I hover my cursor
| | 03:13 |
over this line on either the vertical or
the horizontal.
| | 03:18 |
You see that I get a straight arrow.
And to rotate my image, I'm actually
| | 03:22 |
going to want to have this curved arrow,
but, before I use this curved arrow, I'm
| | 03:26 |
going to take this guide that's right here
in the center, and I'm going to pull it
| | 03:29 |
down onto my guideline.
And that is so I, when I rotate my craft
| | 03:35 |
picture everything will be rotated from
this point.
| | 03:41 |
If I kept it in the center, then it would
just rotate completely from the middle,
| | 03:44 |
but this is a great little handy tool,
because if you stick it on your guideline
| | 03:48 |
or wherever you like it, that's the point
from which your photograph will rotate.
| | 03:54 |
So I've got it placed here, and I'm going
to come up into the corner, click and
| | 03:57 |
drag, and you can see.
I'm lining up the roof of my house with
| | 04:02 |
my guideline from the ruler.
That looks good.
| | 04:05 |
I'm going to Double-click and let that
process, and now I'm just going to pull down
| | 04:09 |
another ruler and see, yup, it's
perfectly parallel to my house, and now I
| | 04:13 |
feel better, I feel more confident that
my grass Is level as well.
| | 04:19 |
Just, with this giant rock here, I
couldn't see it all the way, but I had a
| | 04:21 |
hunch, and when we pulled down our
guideline, we could see that that was true.
| | 04:25 |
Now I don't need my guides anymore, so
I'm going to hide them, and we're going
| | 04:29 |
to come up here to View, and get rid of
those, so we're going to hide our guides.
| | 04:37 |
And now I'm going to deselect my image by
hitting command d or control d.
| | 04:44 |
So I'm going to come over here to my Crop
tool I'm going to select that then click
| | 04:49 |
and drag to exactly where I want and that
looks good so now I'm going to Double-click.
| | 04:58 |
And that'll look so much better, you can
see that now I have a level craft and you
| | 05:02 |
can't see oh,, actually you can.
I'm going to crop that one more time,
| | 05:06 |
because I don't want to see anything out
of the frame, so that looks good, all you
| | 05:09 |
do is quick drag and then double-click it
when you're happy.
| | 05:14 |
Have this perfect craft image.
It looks nice.
| | 05:17 |
I'm happy with it.
We've rotated it.
| | 05:19 |
We've cropped it.
And now I'm going to save it by hitting
| | 05:24 |
Cmd+S or Ctrl+S and we're done.
| | 05:29 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining tone with Curves| 00:02 |
Silhouettes are really big when it comes
to wedding decorations and I made a
| | 00:06 |
vector based silhouette of a friend of
mines wedding.
| | 00:11 |
This was their kiss, it started out as a
photograph, and I took it into
| | 00:14 |
Illustrator, and I traced it and made it
into vector, just so that she could use
| | 00:18 |
it to frame, or if she wanted to put it
on you know, almost use it as a logo, she
| | 00:22 |
could re-size it, and it would be perfect
for printing out on a whole variety of things.
| | 00:31 |
She ended up framing one of the
silhouettes and here it is.
| | 00:35 |
We dried some of the flowers and placed
them next to the silhouette, so it looks
| | 00:38 |
very cute.
This whole photograph is staged very well.
| | 00:43 |
But when we took the picture, it was
kinda under exposed so that's not going to
| | 00:46 |
do, that's not, that's not good for us.
there's so much warmth in here.
| | 00:52 |
It's, it's clearly a wedding photograph,
with the flowers here.
| | 00:55 |
This needs to have a much better feeling
and because it's underexposed we need to
| | 01:00 |
really improve the contrast and the tone,
or the tonal range within this image.
| | 01:06 |
And by tonal range I mean the range of
darks and lights within this photo.
| | 01:11 |
So I think I have the perfect tool in
mind to make this image pop, and that's
| | 01:15 |
with one of my favorite tools, curves.
So I'm going to come up here to Image, go
| | 01:20 |
Adjustment, and then hit Curves.
Of course you could use the shortcut, Cmd
| | 01:24 |
M on a Mac, Ctrl M on a PC.
And immediately this palette is opened
| | 01:28 |
up, and we see before us a histogram.
Now if we just start clicking around on
| | 01:33 |
our image we can see that over here on
the graph we are getting a selection of
| | 01:38 |
lights and dark's, but down here we can
see that the range that is being shown 0
| | 01:42 |
is black and 255 is white.
Our white isn't very pure its not a pure
| | 01:49 |
white its 240 so its prettty close but
its not super super white and our black
| | 01:53 |
is 46 so that is not going to be dark enough
for us.
| | 01:59 |
down here in the lower left this area
where all of our shadows and low lights are.
| | 02:04 |
We can drag this to the right and make
our image much darker now I'm just doing
| | 02:08 |
this for illustrative purposes obviously
what's happening on screen right now is
| | 02:12 |
way dark way, way too dark and unuseable
so I'm going to come back and park it right
| | 02:17 |
here right where are dark data starts.
So I'm going to leave it there.
| | 02:24 |
And now, a similar thing can happen, to
the highlights when you click and drag to
| | 02:28 |
the left, the other part of the graph,
it's just blowing way out, now the case
| | 02:32 |
is completely dissappeared.
This is unuseable, so I'm just going to come
| | 02:38 |
back, a little bit, and start clicking
around again and see what I've got, so it
| | 02:43 |
looks pretty good.
But I think that I can make this a little
| | 02:48 |
bit warmer and more natural looking and
still give it a greater tone by creating
| | 02:52 |
an S-curve here.
So I want to get some nicer whites and you
| | 02:57 |
can see that as I click and push up, my
image is still getting much wider but
| | 03:01 |
it's just using the available data.
It's not forcing more white into the image.
| | 03:10 |
And now if I pull this down here, down my
low lights.
| | 03:15 |
Or my shadows, you can see the same thing
is happening where it's getting really dark.
| | 03:19 |
And I don't want it to be so super dark,
so I'm just going to adjust this a little
| | 03:22 |
bit and give it a nice, I want to find a
nice gentle balance.
| | 03:25 |
An s-curve is a good way to find a
balance within your histogram.
| | 03:31 |
So let's pull this back and take a look.
Now.
| | 03:34 |
Looking at this photograph, it looks
pretty good but it doesn't look like
| | 03:37 |
we've changed a whole lot, and I'm just
going to click right here and show my clipping.
| | 03:42 |
I want to make sure I haven't lost any
data.
| | 03:44 |
There's a little bit of clipping down
here.
| | 03:46 |
This black indicates that I've lost some
information, but I think I'm okay with
| | 03:50 |
that because, it's just a little corner
of the table.
| | 03:54 |
If you have a lot of black showing up in
that clipping pallet or I'm sorry your in
| | 03:59 |
the histogram when you clicked clipping.
See as I slide this there's a lot more
| | 04:05 |
data that's lost.
So we don't want to do that but if you have
| | 04:09 |
a lot of missing information you might
want to adjust for that.
| | 04:13 |
You can also pull this up and down here
to make some changes within your tonal
| | 04:16 |
range but, what we have right now I'm
really happy with, so I'm going to hit OK.
| | 04:22 |
Now, again, it doesn't look like we've
done a whole lot, but if I show the
| | 04:25 |
before, I'm going to click here in my
history palette, that's the before.
| | 04:30 |
Now it looks even more washed out and
white, and when you come back and click
| | 04:33 |
curves, which is the last thing that we
just adjusted.
| | 04:37 |
This whole image seems warmer, it's more
vibrant.
| | 04:41 |
We didn't really change any of the color
value, we just changed the tonal value
| | 04:44 |
and increased some contrast by giving
darker darks and lighter lights.
| | 04:49 |
And that's really a great way to
compensate for an underexposed image of
| | 04:53 |
your craft photography.
So hopefully you'll use the curve's palet.
| | 04:57 |
Try it out.
Don't be afraid to experiment with your
| | 05:00 |
lights and your darks, and you're going to
get a really nice, vibrant image that
| | 05:05 |
just pops off the screen.
| | 05:08 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting color balance| 00:02 |
In this movie, I want to talk about color
correcting your craft photography.
| | 00:06 |
Now, depending on what time of day you
shoot photos of your craft, you're
| | 00:10 |
probably going to get a very different color
cast.
| | 00:15 |
The example on screen is a photograph I
took of these little clay earrings that I
| | 00:19 |
made to look like those little candy
hearts that are popular around
| | 00:23 |
Valentine's Day.
And so I made a collection of earrings
| | 00:28 |
and I was going to give them out to some of
my friends, but I wanted to take a quick
| | 00:31 |
snapshot, a quick photo before I did
that.
| | 00:36 |
I was shooting in my kitchen, which is
effectively a giant light box.
| | 00:40 |
I've got three corners with very bright
light coming in and I have white curtains
| | 00:45 |
that just diffuse all the light.
But I was shooting early in the morning
| | 00:50 |
and the sun wasn't super high, so I got a
very bluish look to my photo.
| | 00:56 |
And if I were shooting late in the
afternoon, outside, this could have
| | 01:00 |
potentially become very yellow, orange,
pink, depending on the direction of the
| | 01:04 |
sun and the location of my photo shoot.
So, I'm sure you've probably also seen
| | 01:11 |
when you're shooting photos inside, under
tungsten, or fluorescent light, you're
| | 01:15 |
going to end up with a more yellow or
greenish-yellow cast.
| | 01:19 |
So, I just have a couple of quick ways
that you can do a little bit of easy
| | 01:23 |
color correcting on your craft photos.
Color correcting your images is not going to
| | 01:29 |
be the same every single time.
Depending on what your color palette is
| | 01:34 |
within your craft photo, you're going to
have different options for how you can go
| | 01:38 |
ahead and try to improve the color.
Fortunately, with the example on screen,
| | 01:45 |
I happen to have a little patch of gray
over here in the corner.
| | 01:49 |
Now, that normally would not be such a
notable thing, but my favorite tip for
| | 01:54 |
color correcting, has to do with the
curves palette, and a little swatch of gray.
| | 02:03 |
So, I'm actually going to hide my
History, show my Layers, and I'm going to
| | 02:08 |
come over here to the Adjustment Palette
of my screen.
| | 02:13 |
Now, I'm going to open up Curves within this
Adjustment Palette, and I'll tell you why
| | 02:18 |
I'm doing it here.
When I click the Curves Palette with
| | 02:22 |
Adjustments, you'll notice that another
layer has formed right above my
| | 02:27 |
Background image.
So, any changes that I make here are not
| | 02:33 |
going to affect the original content, the
original data of my Background image.
| | 02:39 |
So, this is a really cool place to make
some edits and if you want to kind of get experimental.
| | 02:45 |
I would encourage you to do so in the
Adjustments panel, just because it won't
| | 02:49 |
degrade your original content in any way.
So, that said, I'm going to select
| | 02:54 |
Curves, and I'm going to come over here to
this middle Eyedropper.
| | 02:59 |
Now you'll see, when I hover over, it
says Sample in image to set gray point.
| | 03:03 |
So when I depress that little button, and
come on over to my gray corner, I can
| | 03:08 |
select different areas within the image.
And you can see that the overall color of
| | 03:14 |
my photograph has immediately improved,
it's much warmer, it has a much better balance.
| | 03:21 |
And looking over here now at the graph
within Curves, and I've got a very nice
| | 03:26 |
balance of RGB, red, green, blue.
So, that is one of my favorite ways,
| | 03:32 |
because it is so darn quick and so easy
to correct color just by selecting that
| | 03:37 |
middle grey Eyedropper, and finding a
spot within my photograph to take a sample.
| | 03:46 |
So of course, there are other ways that
you can color correct your craft
| | 03:49 |
photography, but, this is my favorite
way.
| | 03:52 |
It's super quick, it's really easy, and
when you're working within the
| | 03:55 |
Adjustments panel, it doesn't degrade any
of your original data.
| | 04:00 |
So you can just shut off and turn on the
Layers just to see if you like the difference.
| | 04:05 |
And then, you can keep playing with them,
so you can continue to refine the color
| | 04:09 |
of your photo using the Curves within the
Adjustment Palette.
| | 04:14 |
And that's just one really quick way to
color correct your craft photography.
| | 04:22 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Giving brightness a boost| 00:02 |
Occasionally, you're going to end up with a
craft photo that just needs a little
| | 00:05 |
something extra, and that's how I feel
about the image that's on screen right now.
| | 00:11 |
So, when my favorite children's book
author, Dr Seuss, recently had his
| | 00:15 |
birthday, I wanted to craft up a little
tribute in his honor, because I loved his
| | 00:20 |
books when I was growing up and I still
love them today.
| | 00:25 |
So I thought that that I would needle
felt a Lorax and if you're not familiar
| | 00:30 |
with the story of the Lorax he speaks for
the trees.
| | 00:35 |
So I made this little setting out of
drinking straws and pieces of colorful
| | 00:40 |
raw wool and it vaguely looks like the
tree, forest, that he would have sat on
| | 00:45 |
within the original book, but for
purposes of staging a craft photo, I was
| | 00:50 |
happy with it.
Now, I took several photographs, and I do
| | 00:57 |
have some that are much better of just
the Lorax himself, but I wanted to have
| | 01:00 |
one that was an entire habitat shot and
when I looked at this photograph I wasn't
| | 01:04 |
very pleased with the amount of dark gray
behind him.
| | 01:10 |
I don't know what was going on with the
lighting in my house that day, but it
| | 01:14 |
looks really dark and it needs some kind
of boost, so I'm just going to show you a
| | 01:18 |
couple of quick ways that you can add
some brightness to your photos, when
| | 01:21 |
you're not happy with, not necessarily
the exposure but just the overall feel of it.
| | 01:30 |
And that's what I'm having a problem
with.
| | 01:32 |
I feel like the Lorax is pretty well
exposed, but this background is just so
| | 01:35 |
damn dark, and I feel like it's really
conflicting with the cuteness of my
| | 01:39 |
little Lorax tribute.
So First of all, I'm going to go into my
| | 01:45 |
adjustments panel and open up levels.
And of course, when we're in the
| | 01:51 |
adjustment panel, our new layer appears
here with our levels masked.
| | 01:57 |
So, any changes we make are not going to
affect our original photograph.
| | 02:01 |
So I am looking at my histogram here, and
while there's a pretty even distribution
| | 02:05 |
of lights and darks, I'm just going to take
this white point and drag it over to the
| | 02:09 |
left just to show you what that would
look like.
| | 02:13 |
And as I'm doing that, you can see that
there's a lot of data that's just being
| | 02:17 |
blown out completely.
There's all kinds of clipping occurring.
| | 02:21 |
So, while I like that the background's
getting nice and bright, the foreground
| | 02:26 |
looks awful.
So I'm going to slide that back over, and
| | 02:30 |
now I'm going to grab my mid tones, and
drag that to the left, and just show you
| | 02:33 |
how that looks.
Again, I like the overall brightness of
| | 02:38 |
the background, but this part looks
terrible, and this part is what I want to
| | 02:42 |
look great.
So, I am going to bring that back to the
| | 02:46 |
middle and I'm going to shut off this layer
just in case I didn't drag that properly.
| | 02:52 |
And it looks like there was a little
change there so that is one way that you
| | 02:56 |
can adjust brightness if your entire
photograph needs some brightness, but,
| | 03:01 |
like I was just showing you, I feel like
the Lorax is properly exposed, so I don't
| | 03:05 |
really want to wash him out.
Now, I'm going to come back here to my main
| | 03:13 |
adjustment panel.
And now I'm going to click curves and see if
| | 03:16 |
that does anything better for me.
So I'm going to grab this at the very
| | 03:20 |
whitest, white point and the same things
happening it's just blowing way out and
| | 03:23 |
if I were to grab down here well that
would just make it much darker and that's
| | 03:27 |
not at all what I'm trying to achieve.
And of course if I grab from my middle
| | 03:33 |
tones the same thing happens just over a
slower period of time so, I'm going to
| | 03:37 |
ignore that I'm going to shut this layer
off.
| | 03:41 |
And I, I think I'm going to take the time
now to duplicate my background layer,
| | 03:45 |
just because I don't want any of these
changes that I'm making as I'm
| | 03:49 |
experimenting with my brightness to
negatively effect the original image that
| | 03:53 |
I'm starting out with.
So, I am just going to call this next layer
| | 04:01 |
Brightness Test, and we're going to try one
more thing to see if we can get a nice
| | 04:06 |
bright overall feel to our photograph,
without compromising the Lorax himself.
| | 04:16 |
So, So I am going to select my eraser and
come on up here to layers and click layer
| | 04:22 |
mask reveal all.
Now, you'll notice that I've just created
| | 04:29 |
a layer mask, and my background image is
nice and dark, but the mask over it is
| | 04:35 |
super washed out and light.
So I just want to check really quickly
| | 04:42 |
the brush that I'm going to use and find
a nice size and you know I am going to
| | 04:48 |
zoom in on my Lorax by hitting Cmd+ on a
Mac and Ctrl+ on a PC and with white
| | 04:53 |
paint selected.
I am just going to start brushing away,
| | 05:02 |
the white layer mask over the top of my
little friend.
| | 05:08 |
So, you have probably seen, I'm just
going to change the opacity here, just so
| | 05:13 |
I can really get gentle with my strokes.
You've probably seen if you've watched
| | 05:20 |
any of these craft videos tutorial that I
used layer masks in another movie to
| | 05:25 |
improve the background of an image and in
a sense I'm doing that with this movie
| | 05:30 |
but what I'm really, really trying to do
is just brighten certain areas of the
| | 05:35 |
image that aren't cooperating.
The exposure is just wrong on the
| | 05:44 |
background and so right on the foreground
so.
| | 05:48 |
And I'm just going to paint away and zoom
in a little more and switch my brush when
| | 05:53 |
I want to paint back some of the pixels
that I have inadvertently removed.
| | 06:00 |
And that's going to make my Lorax just
kind of pop off the page, and look like
| | 06:05 |
he's really the only thing that's nice
and dark and stands out among his little
| | 06:09 |
forest of trees here.
So I'm going to lower the opacity even more,
| | 06:17 |
just to paint back some of these really
wispy and fuzzy whiskers of his and now
| | 06:23 |
I'm just going to zoom on out and see how
that looks.
| | 06:30 |
And while my layer in the background is
almost too light now, my Lorax really is
| | 06:36 |
the center of attention.
So I could go back and try to change the
| | 06:42 |
levels of this background by just sliding
my mid-tones back and forth a little bit
| | 06:48 |
and trying to find a place where I like
the lightness of the background.
| | 06:56 |
But it's not conflicting with my focus,
which is my handmade craft.
| | 07:01 |
So, I'm going to just try to find a nice
spot here.
| | 07:04 |
I'm going to say okay and I can shut that
off if I don't want to see it and that's
| | 07:07 |
what my image looked like when I began
and that's what it looks like when I end it.
| | 07:13 |
And I think that I've done a good job
successfully putting the focus on my
| | 07:18 |
little Lorax here, my little Dr Suess
tribute, and hopefully with this layer mask.
| | 07:25 |
And just getting to know the levels and
the curves adjustment tools, you'll be
| | 07:30 |
able to add some brightness when you have
a craft photo that has some patches that
| | 07:34 |
are much darker than you would like.
| | 07:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing clutter with the Clone tool| 00:02 |
In this movie I want to show you how to
remove part of the background of your
| | 00:05 |
craft photo using the Clone tool.
And the reason you want to do this is
| | 00:10 |
maybe you took a photograph of your
craft.
| | 00:13 |
And when you downloaded it later you
noticed there was something distracting
| | 00:16 |
in the background of your image that you
wanted to get rid of.
| | 00:21 |
Or in this case maybe the way you staged
that particular craft, you needed some
| | 00:24 |
kind of helpful device or some little
accessory.
| | 00:28 |
Something to help you just position and
hold the craft while you were taking the photograph.
| | 00:34 |
And then you had the intent of removing
it in post production.
| | 00:37 |
So that's what we're doing here.
I've taken a series of still images, with
| | 00:40 |
the intention of animating them later.
So, I've got my craft, right here this
| | 00:46 |
purple octopus.
And I wanted him to look like he was
| | 00:49 |
swimming through the frame when I
animated him later on.
| | 00:54 |
So what I did was I ran a piece of wire
through his head and then I held it and I
| | 00:58 |
started him over here in this grassy area
and I took a picture.
| | 01:04 |
I repositioned him I took a picture, I
repositioned him I just kind of a moved
| | 01:08 |
him along through the frame.
And now here he is halfway along his journey.
| | 01:15 |
But before I can go ahead and do my
animating, I need to go through and
| | 01:18 |
process all my images.
So that's where I am in this movie.
| | 01:21 |
I need to get rid of this wire and my
finger.
| | 01:24 |
Those are not going to show up in my
movie.
| | 01:27 |
I don't want them.
And the tool that I'm going to use to get
| | 01:29 |
rid of them is my Clone Stamp tool.
So I'm going to come over here to my tool
| | 01:33 |
box and select it and right away I can
see the size of my brush.
| | 01:39 |
Now if I come up here and click this drop
down menu, I can manually change the size
| | 01:43 |
of my brush by just scrolling through
and.
| | 01:49 |
Choosing whatever I want.
I'm going to just pick one that's right
| | 01:52 |
in the middle for now.
And then I might need to do some more
| | 01:55 |
precision work so maybe I would come down
and use a smaller brush later on, but for
| | 01:58 |
now I'm good right there.
And another thing that you would want to
| | 02:03 |
note in here is the hardness and softness
of the brush you're using.
| | 02:08 |
So I'm going to show you two examples of
that and I'm just going to zoom in.
| | 02:12 |
So that I can give you a really good
example of what that would be.
| | 02:17 |
So I'm using a smaller brush now that I'm
zoomed in.
| | 02:20 |
And I'm going to push my hardness way to
the left and just take one sample of the
| | 02:24 |
C star.
I'm going to Alt+ Click on a PC or Option
| | 02:29 |
+ Click on a Mac.
And then I'm just going to drag my selection
| | 02:33 |
over here and click it once.
And now it has taken a clone selection
| | 02:37 |
from the sea star and put it over here on
my fake grass, so that's what the soft
| | 02:41 |
brush looks like when it's slid all the
way over to the left.
| | 02:47 |
When you slide it all the way to the
right and take another selection.
| | 02:50 |
You can already see that the brush that's
hovering over the sea star has a much
| | 02:54 |
more defined stroke, a much more defined
line.
| | 02:57 |
So let's take another selection, by
hitting Alt or Option+Click.
| | 03:01 |
And I'm going to put that right next to the
first one, zoom in a little bit more so
| | 03:04 |
that you can see it.
And that's a huge difference, that's the
| | 03:08 |
same size brush.
But I'm just using two different hardness
| | 03:12 |
and softness levels on my Clone Stamp
tool, so you get really different results.
| | 03:18 |
So I'm going to go back, I don't need that
anymore.
| | 03:21 |
I'm going to zoom out, I just wanted to show
you what those two, what your options
| | 03:24 |
were as far as hardness and softness.
for me, I'm, I like to kinda keep it
| | 03:28 |
somewhere in the middle unless I'm doing
again really precision work.
| | 03:33 |
And I want to get a very fine line or
just kind of haze something out then I
| | 03:37 |
would want something much fluffier and
softer.
| | 03:40 |
So I am going to increase by brush stroke
and I am just going to quickly get rid of
| | 03:44 |
this whole wire.
And then show you something else that you
| | 03:47 |
can do with the Clone, Clone Stamp tools.
So right now I am clicking Option+Click
| | 03:52 |
and I am just clicking right next to the
selection And just bringing it all the
| | 03:56 |
way down the length of the wire.
And I'm going to stop just above his head so
| | 04:01 |
we can zoom in and do a little bit more
detail work there.
| | 04:05 |
And now I'm going to increase the size of my
brush, so I can have a large selection,
| | 04:08 |
hit Option or Alt+Click again.
And I'm just going to remove my whole finger
| | 04:13 |
like that.
Now as I zoom in I can see, lets get this
| | 04:16 |
brush a little smaller for you, I can see
its very light.
| | 04:21 |
Its very faint but there is a little
change going on in the great background.
| | 04:27 |
So I wanted to be sure that I was using
brush hardness or softness that was going to
| | 04:31 |
take care of blending the tones in the
background.
| | 04:36 |
But then also I want to be sure that I'm
not getting in the way of all these
| | 04:40 |
little fine details and little fluffs.
So what I'm going to do is, just try to get
| | 04:46 |
a little bit closer, without interfering
too much.
| | 04:50 |
with the, the general shape of the
octopus head.
| | 04:55 |
But now what I'm going to do is I'm going to
bring my slider over and make a slightly
| | 04:59 |
harder brush.
Make it a little smaller, little smaller.
| | 05:08 |
And now I'm going to adjust the flow of
the opacity and I'm going to do that.
| | 05:12 |
I like changing the opacity on my Clone
Stamp when I'm working with something
| | 05:15 |
that's really patterned or textured.
If you go ahead and repeat the pattern of
| | 05:20 |
something that has a very definite
texture, then your eye can detect that immediately.
| | 05:27 |
So I'm just going to start painting over,
just so that you can see what I mean, but
| | 05:31 |
as I'm doing this, you can already see,
look at that.
| | 05:36 |
There are these two parallel lines now,
and your eye, or mine anyway, is drawn
| | 05:39 |
directly to that, it doesn't look
natural.
| | 05:42 |
So I'm going to undo that, I don't like what
I've done, and going to check my, where am I?
| | 05:48 |
I'm going to need to come back to my Clone
tool, and I'm going to check the opacity,
| | 05:52 |
and I'm just going to bring it down.
And by bringing down the opacity, you can
| | 05:56 |
just make a more subtle change with your
Clone Stamp tool.
| | 06:00 |
And it won't really, it just kind of
gently erases what you've done.
| | 06:04 |
So, I'm going to just kind of gently erase,
and now I'm Clone Stamp and take of some
| | 06:08 |
of this fuzz over here, and Clone Stamp
it.
| | 06:12 |
So that if somebody zoomed way in, it
would still look like he had this halo of
| | 06:16 |
fuzz all around his head.
I don't want it to look like there's
| | 06:19 |
suddenly a bald spot over my octopus,
because that just doesn't quite look natural.
| | 06:24 |
So those are a couple of things to look
at when you're using the Clone Stamp tool.
| | 06:28 |
You can change the size, the hardness,
the opacity.
| | 06:31 |
You can also change the flow.
Just play around with your different
| | 06:35 |
options, but that's a really quick way to
clean up the background of your craft image.
| | 06:41 |
When you're, either removing something
that was found accidently.
| | 06:45 |
Or just getting rid of a staging tool
that you ssed to initially set up the scene.
| | 06:51 |
And I hope that helps clean up your craft
photos.
| | 06:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Compressing and UploadingCompressing images| 00:02 |
At some point in your crafting career
chances are you're going to need to send
| | 00:05 |
images of your crafts to a third party,
whether it's a publisher or a printer, or
| | 00:09 |
even a blogger.
And they're all going to have different
| | 00:14 |
requirements, as far as the size of your
image, and also the resolution.
| | 00:18 |
And knowing how to identify what the
resolution of your craft photo is, and
| | 00:22 |
how to compress it if you need to, is
going to become a skill that you're going to
| | 00:25 |
have to get very familiar with.
Fortunately its not that hard.
| | 00:31 |
So, in this movie we're going to go over
just that and talk about what exactly DPI
| | 00:36 |
is, find out where our image size is and
also how to compress our image, or
| | 00:40 |
optimize it so that our print quality is
not compromised to much.
| | 00:48 |
So first of all, let's say that your
publisher asks you to send them a
| | 00:52 |
photograph, and they give you a specific
size that they need to print your image.
| | 00:59 |
So, how do you find out what exactly what
your craft photo size is?
| | 01:03 |
Well, on screen right now we have a
photograph I took of my hands making some
| | 01:07 |
dough, and I needed to send this very
photo in for publication so I wanted to
| | 01:11 |
make sure that I was giving them exactly
what they wanted.
| | 01:17 |
I came up to Image and Image Size, and
when I opened up the Image Size palette,
| | 01:21 |
I'm presented with all sorts of different
information.
| | 01:25 |
I can see the pixel dimensions.
I can see the document size.
| | 01:29 |
This can be changed from centimeters, and
you can also make adjustments for pixel
| | 01:33 |
to centimeters or pixel per inch.
And in my experience printers,
| | 01:37 |
publishers, etcetera they're usually
going to give you a specific size that they
| | 01:41 |
need from you and that is going to
usually be the resolution of your image.
| | 01:47 |
They will be able to layout your image
wherever it fits within the pages of
| | 01:50 |
their magazines or their book but if it
isn't a high enough quality to print,
| | 01:54 |
they're probably not going to use it.
So really pay attention to what your
| | 02:00 |
image's resolution is.
Now, when they ask you for a specific
| | 02:04 |
resolution, they might ask you for a
specific DPI, or PPI, and that's either
| | 02:08 |
Dots Per Inch or Pixels Per Inch, so
don't be confused by that, this is the
| | 02:12 |
same information.
As you're getting right here.
| | 02:18 |
300 dpi or 150 dpi is pretty standard for
printing images out on paper.
| | 02:27 |
But if somebody is asking you for 72 dpi,
they usually are only going to run your
| | 02:32 |
image either in a blog or in a
newsletter.
| | 02:36 |
Somewhere where it's just going to be screen
based and not printed out at a super high quality.
| | 02:42 |
And if you find that you need to change
the resolution of your image, it's fairly
| | 02:45 |
easy to do so.
Although, it's only easy if you need to
| | 02:49 |
decrease the resolution of your image.
Increases the resolution of your image
| | 02:55 |
might result in some very strange
distortion or Pixelation so I'm just
| | 03:00 |
going to give you a quick example here.
You would never really change your
| | 03:07 |
resolution to 600 and you can see up here
that my document is being shown at 25%
| | 03:12 |
and if I zoomed in to a 100% then you
could see.
| | 03:18 |
That this is very grainy and kind of
strange looking so I don't like that.
| | 03:22 |
I'm going to go back in my history, zoom out
and come back to my normal resolution here.
| | 03:27 |
So I'm feeling good about that and that
is basically it.
| | 03:30 |
So this is just identifying what size
your image is and then figuring out how
| | 03:34 |
to change.
Now, I always make sure that I have my
| | 03:38 |
scale styles and can straight
proportions.
| | 03:41 |
Checked just so that nothing wonky
happens when I'm changing either the
| | 03:46 |
document size or the pixel dimension.
So be sure that these are checked and
| | 03:51 |
your image will size proportionally.
Now I mentioned briefly DPI and PPI, and
| | 03:56 |
really those are just the pixels per
inch, and all that means it's just the
| | 04:00 |
amount of detail within an image.
It's how much digital data is held within
| | 04:07 |
this photograph.
When your image is printed out, that's
| | 04:11 |
going to just determine how crystal clear
it is or how fuzzy it looks when it's printed.
| | 04:18 |
Let's say, that with our knowledge now
of, finding out what size our image is,
| | 04:23 |
and how great our resolution is, we
wanted to go ahead send it to a printer,
| | 04:28 |
who wanted an even more optimized image,
that could be emailed.
| | 04:36 |
So we're going to come over here to File and
instead of clicking Save As or Save,
| | 04:40 |
we're going to Save for Web and Devices.
Now this is definitely some place to pay
| | 04:47 |
attention to the requirements that your
printer gave you.
| | 04:51 |
You can really bring down the file size
of your JPEG by saving it for web or
| | 04:55 |
devices, but if you start noticing that
your quality is degrading.
| | 05:02 |
Then I would not recommend optimizing it
so greatly and instead look into sending
| | 05:07 |
them a larger file in a different way
instead of email either FTP or some other source.
| | 05:15 |
But if you're sending something for
print and it's on a very small scale.
| | 05:19 |
And by small scale I just mean its a
physically small image so it doesn't need
| | 05:23 |
a huge DPI or it's only going on a blog
or a news letter and this is were you
| | 05:27 |
going to want to pay attention to the
size of your file, the quality of your
| | 05:31 |
file and the file type.
In this little nifty window here, you can
| | 05:37 |
just move your image around, so that if
there is an area within your image that
| | 05:41 |
you really want to make sure that you're
not losing a lot of data, like here in
| | 05:45 |
the knuckles there's a lot of detail, it
looks really grainy and nice in black and white.
| | 05:53 |
But If I were going to really lower the
quality of this image, even just by
| | 05:57 |
clicking a few things I can already see a
major change in the quality.
| | 06:02 |
So, I'm going to come back up here and just
hit Very High, and maybe you just saw
| | 06:06 |
that, that was pretty great.
The quality is restored.
| | 06:10 |
I'm at 80% quality the file size is 318K,
instead of 2.7MB, which is what it
| | 06:19 |
started out on.
So the final size, is much, much smaller now.
| | 06:26 |
But again, I just want to keep an eye on
my quality of my image.
| | 06:29 |
So I'm just going to come on over here, and
and this is one more place where I can
| | 06:33 |
really bring down the size of the image.
If I don't necessarily need it to be
| | 06:40 |
print resolution.
By decreasing the percentage of the image size.
| | 06:44 |
You can see that the image has physically
gotten smaller.
| | 06:47 |
And the file size has also gotten
smaller.
| | 06:50 |
So I'm going to say, okay, this is great.
I'm going to go ahead and save.
| | 06:54 |
And now I can save this as something
else.
| | 06:56 |
I'm going to want to change the name.
Just so that I'm not replacing the
| | 07:03 |
original large image that I started out
with.
| | 07:08 |
You can also change the quality of the
image that you're shooting within your camera.
| | 07:15 |
And you would just go and do that by
clicking on menu, and then selecting Quality.
| | 07:19 |
And you can see if you're shooting at a
very high or low resolution.
| | 07:23 |
Very very high would be something like
raw.
| | 07:26 |
And then there's probably a spectrum of
different files that you can shoot at,
| | 07:29 |
below raw.
Different levels of JPEGs and things like that.
| | 07:33 |
Now, the only thing I would want to say is
just be careful to not get seduced by the
| | 07:37 |
small file size when you're shooting.
If you want to have.
| | 07:42 |
Thousands of images on your camera's
disc.
| | 07:46 |
Then that's great.
You would want to shoot with a smaller
| | 07:49 |
file size.
But if you have any intentions, at all,
| | 07:52 |
of printing those images, then you're
going to end up with a quality that is
| | 07:57 |
not as good as if you shot fewer
photographs at a higher resolution.
| | 08:03 |
So that's just the way resolution works
and a very general overview of how to
| | 08:08 |
compress a file.
That's the overview on file size and how
| | 08:14 |
to compress and optimize your craft
photography.
| | 08:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the cloud for image storage| 00:02 |
Back in the olden days, people shared
photographs by passing around photo
| | 00:05 |
albums, flipping accordion sleeves out of
their wallets, and even hosting slideshow
| | 00:09 |
parties in their homes to entertain or
bore their guests with recent vacation,
| | 00:13 |
wedding, or baby photos.
But today, there are countless websites
| | 00:19 |
dedicated to photo uploading, organizing,
and sharing.
| | 00:23 |
And accessing photographs from these
remote closed server is known as the
| | 00:26 |
Cloud has never been easier or more
convenient.
| | 00:30 |
There are a few things that you want to
look out for when you're doing this.
| | 00:33 |
So, on screen here, we're looking at my
personal Flickr account, and Flickr is
| | 00:38 |
just one of the many photo sharing
websites there is also Photobucket
| | 00:42 |
ah,SmugMug, Google's Picasa.
And while each of these different
| | 00:48 |
websites has their own special and unique
features, they're all really basically
| | 00:54 |
just photo sharing websites.
So I'm using Flickr just because I had a
| | 00:59 |
Yahoo account and it was free to start a
Flickr account and that's what I started using.
| | 01:05 |
But I also really like a lot of the
functionality.
| | 01:09 |
So, I'm going to show you how you can go
ahead and open your own Flickr account to
| | 01:13 |
share your photographs, and also help you
improve your photography while being able
| | 01:18 |
to access your photographs for easier
blogging social networking, and then
| | 01:22 |
eventually, for selling in your online
craft store.
| | 01:28 |
So if you don't already have a Yahoo
account, then you're going to want to go ahead
| | 01:32 |
and sign up for one, and I just went
ahead and created a new account so I
| | 01:35 |
could show you from scratch how it looks.
So, this is what I've got here.
| | 01:41 |
I just opened up a new Yahoo account,
which of course is free.
| | 01:45 |
And with that, I was able to go to Flickr
and get started with my own photo sharing.
| | 01:52 |
So, basically, what I want to do is, I
could go through and personalize my
| | 01:55 |
profile, then upload my photos and find
my friends, but I just want to get straight
| | 01:59 |
to it so I'm going to click Upload Photos &
Videos.
| | 02:04 |
And when that happens, I come to this
welcome screen where I can either choose
| | 02:08 |
photos and videos from an entire folder
or if I click Basic Uploader, then I can
| | 02:11 |
just upload one image at a time.
You can also just choose photos and
| | 02:17 |
videos to upload one image at a time, as
well, so that's what we're going to do here.
| | 02:22 |
I've got this upload to Flickr.jpeg, so
I'm going to open that.
| | 02:27 |
Now, before you upload your photographs,
you'll see that you can set your privacy
| | 02:30 |
levels, so you can either have your
photos completely public or you can put
| | 02:34 |
together a two-tier level of security
where either only people you call friends
| | 02:38 |
can see your photographs or only people
you call family or both.
| | 02:44 |
So, you have the option there to kind of
click around where.
| | 02:47 |
Your particular images are safe, and if
somebody else wanted to see them, they
| | 02:51 |
would just have to have a Flickr account
and be your friend or be your family.
| | 02:57 |
So right now, I'm just going to keep my
photos completely public and go ahead and
| | 03:02 |
click Upload.
So, that's processing now, and as soon as
| | 03:06 |
that photographs goes live, I'm going to
have the option to do a few more things.
| | 03:12 |
And once it's up, we can go ahead and
add a description, so that's what I'm
| | 03:16 |
going to do now.
But before I actually go too far in this
| | 03:19 |
process, I just want to get you familiar
with titles, descriptions, and tags.
| | 03:24 |
So, giving your photograph a title is
just going to basically tell your friends,
| | 03:27 |
family, and anybody who happens to surf
on over to your page exactly what they're
| | 03:31 |
looking at.
So, here, I have a photograph of a little
| | 03:36 |
two-sided terrarium that I put together
with some carnivorous plants, so I'm
| | 03:41 |
going to call this Carnivorous Plant
Terrarium.
| | 03:48 |
And I'm going to call the description of
it, Reusing wall mounted fish tanks.
| | 04:00 |
Okay, so, now, if somebody see's my
photograph, the title is going to be
| | 04:04 |
Carnivorous Plant Terrariums.
If they want to know a little bit more
| | 04:09 |
about it, they can see that we're using
wall mounted fish tanks.
| | 04:12 |
And then within Tags, tags are something
we'll talk about more in another movie.
| | 04:16 |
But basically, this is just a way to
describe very quickly everything that is
| | 04:20 |
in this photograph and that will help
people more easily find your photograph.
| | 04:27 |
So we're going to say carnivorous,
plants, terrarium flowers.
| | 04:33 |
The type of carnivorous plant that is in
there.
| | 04:38 |
And you'll notice there's a little red
line here telling me that I've
| | 04:44 |
incorrectly spelled pinguicula, but that
is in fact how you spell pinguicula, so
| | 04:51 |
I'm just going to go ahead and say okay,
that looks good.
| | 04:59 |
But before I actually do hit Save, I want
to create a new set.
| | 05:04 |
And creating a set is just a way of
organizing your photographs.
| | 05:08 |
So, this one is going to be called,
Radmegan terrariums and things I grow in
| | 05:16 |
jars and containers.
And I'm going to create this set.
| | 05:28 |
And now, this individual photograph
belongs to this individual set and I can
| | 05:33 |
add several photograph.
I can add as many as I'd like to this set.
| | 05:38 |
And that's going to be a great way for
people to easily navigate and see how
| | 05:42 |
I've laid out my photographs and how I've
grouped my photographs.
| | 05:46 |
So I'm going to show you an example.
I'm going to go back to my personal Flickr
| | 05:50 |
photostream, where you can see that I've
got this wall mounted succulent project,
| | 05:53 |
where you can see, well, that's not a
very good example, that only has three
| | 05:56 |
photos in it.
But here is an example of a set that has
| | 06:01 |
a whole variety of little needle felting
projects that I've made and you can
| | 06:05 |
scroll through.
These were all different projects that I
| | 06:09 |
made at different times, but I was able
to put them all into one set.
| | 06:15 |
And this is just a way for me to organize
my craft and my photographs within my
| | 06:19 |
Flickr screen, so that you don't have to
just scroll on and on and on and on.
| | 06:25 |
So, anyway, we don't need to see another
setload.
| | 06:28 |
I think you can understand how that part
works.
| | 06:31 |
It's just a method of organizing your
photographs.
| | 06:35 |
So I'm going to come back to this one.
And when I click on the photo itself,
| | 06:40 |
there is one other thing that I can do
that I really think is pretty cool about
| | 06:44 |
Flickr, and that is, that I can add it to
a different group.
| | 06:50 |
So, I'm in Flickr, this is my special
page, but if I want to go and put this
| | 06:54 |
photograph out into the world, I can look
for a group.
| | 06:59 |
So I can say, that I want to find a group
just dedicated to carnivorous plants.
| | 07:06 |
And lo and behold, if I search groups,
these are different public groups of
| | 07:11 |
photographs that you can see how many
members are participating and how many
| | 07:15 |
items they have uploaded.
And all you need to do is click on the
| | 07:22 |
group that you find interesting and you
can only join photographs if you join the
| | 07:26 |
group and then say, yes, I would like to.
And now, when you come back to your
| | 07:34 |
personal photostream and click on your
photograph, you can come over here to
| | 07:40 |
Actions and hit Add Photo to Group.
Now, I joined this other group, Plants
| | 07:47 |
That Look Out Of This World a little
earlier.
| | 07:51 |
If I wanted to add this photograph to
that group, all I would have to do is
| | 07:55 |
click it.
And then, once it's done, you can see
| | 07:59 |
that this photo appears in the public
group of carnivorous plants that has over
| | 08:04 |
8,000 photographs.
The public group that is called Plants
| | 08:09 |
That Look out of This World and then my
Radmegan terrarium's set, which is just
| | 08:13 |
located in my private area.
But the reason I like using groups is
| | 08:18 |
because it's a built-in audience.
So, right now, I don't have any friends.
| | 08:23 |
I don't have any contacts within this
Flickr account, so nobody's really going to
| | 08:27 |
know that this photograph exists.
There are thousands of people using
| | 08:34 |
Flickr right now and many of the other
image hosting websites, but if I'm just
| | 08:38 |
putting one little tiny photo up online
and I'm not giving it, you know, great
| | 08:42 |
tags or a great title or participating in
these public groups, nobody's going to
| | 08:46 |
really know that I have even put anything
up there.
| | 08:53 |
And you can go through and add friends,
of course, and find acquaintances within
| | 08:57 |
Flickr and within the other image hosting
websites, but joining a group is just a
| | 09:00 |
really good way of getting your
photograph in front of the eyes of a
| | 09:04 |
bunch of different people in a very easy
way and a built-in collection of people.
| | 09:11 |
So that's how you join a group.
Now, you'll notice that while we were
| | 09:15 |
over here in Actions, you can do all
kinds of different things once you've
| | 09:18 |
added your photograph.
And it will just be up to you to go
| | 09:23 |
through and kind of explore and really
figure out when it's appropriate to use
| | 09:27 |
these different options like, editing
your photo and picnic.
| | 09:32 |
That's a great way that you can add
quickly a copyright or watermark, you can
| | 09:36 |
see all the different sizes, you can tag
a person if this photograph had a person
| | 09:40 |
in it.
make little notes or you can add it to
| | 09:44 |
your map, and I can say exactly where
this photograph was taken.
| | 09:48 |
But I'm more interested right now in
this area over here.
| | 09:52 |
This envelope indicates that I could
e-mail this photograph to somebody
| | 09:55 |
quickly, I could post it on Facebook, I
could post it on Twitter.
| | 09:59 |
But if you're a craft blogger, it's
really super easy to push your
| | 10:02 |
photographs from Flickr to Blogger, and
that is one of the reasons that I love
| | 10:07 |
Flickr, because I'm just, I'm able to
organize my craft photographs using sets
| | 10:11 |
and then upload them to Blogger.
And all I have to do then is just write
| | 10:18 |
the descriptions and any other anecdotes
that go along with the craft photo.
| | 10:23 |
So, this is just one of the many sites
that you can use for photo sharing.
| | 10:26 |
But it really does make it easy to show
your craft photos to different friends,
| | 10:30 |
family, use it for blogging, use it for
social networking via Facebook and Twitter.
| | 10:37 |
Or, just have a nice collection for
yourself of all of your personal
| | 10:40 |
photographs that you can see either
privately or share with your friends.
| | 10:45 |
So, one of the things I would warn
against is just thinking about which
| | 10:48 |
photographs you really feel good about
putting online publically and which ones
| | 10:51 |
you really do want to keep private.
I usually don't post pictures of my young
| | 10:57 |
nieces or things that are extremely
personal.
| | 11:01 |
These are all public websites, so just
think about which photograph you wouldn't
| | 11:04 |
mind the entire world seeing, and which
ones you kind of want to keep to
| | 11:07 |
yourself, and to your friends, and to
your family.
| | 11:11 |
And then, also, before you actually go
ahead and either set up your account or
| | 11:15 |
after you have gone ahead and set up your
account, just go through, read the terms
| | 11:19 |
of services, read about the privacy.
And really, just get to know the photo
| | 11:25 |
sharing site that you have chosen just so
you're not surprised if anything changes
| | 11:29 |
within the functionality, or if your
photo sharing website is bought by
| | 11:32 |
another company, these things happen.
It's just part of having all that free
| | 11:39 |
space that's available for you to host
your photographs online.
| | 11:43 |
There are certain conditions that go
along with it.
| | 11:46 |
So, that's how you use Flickr, and I hope
that you enjoy sharing your photographs
| | 11:51 |
with your friends and family.
| | 11:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tagging images for search engine optimization| 00:00 |
Any craft blogger will tell you what a
great feeling it is when one of their
| | 00:03 |
posts goes viral.
And all of a sudden, there's an influx of
| | 00:08 |
traffic, a huge spike in your statistics,
and a lot of comments just on one
| | 00:11 |
specific blog post or craft project that
you've put together.
| | 00:17 |
So, when that happens, it can be chance,
it can be luck, it can be that you just
| | 00:21 |
happen to put together a very well
written and poignant blog post with
| | 00:24 |
lovely photographs.
But there can be more to it as well.
| | 00:29 |
You can encourage this chain of events,
this influx of traffic, by optimizing
| | 00:34 |
your craft photos for search engines.
And search engine optimization might
| | 00:40 |
sound like a scary term that makes you
just want to zone out a little bit, but
| | 00:44 |
it's really as simple as this.
If you were having a dinner party, and
| | 00:49 |
you wanted all of your friends to come
over to that party, wouldn't you want to
| | 00:53 |
tell them that your were hosting a dinner
party?
| | 00:57 |
Wouldn't you send out invitations and let
them know?
| | 01:00 |
If you just thought in your mind, I want to
have a dinner party and then hoped your
| | 01:04 |
friends would show up, chances are you
would be disappointed and eating alone
| | 01:08 |
that night.
Search engine optimization for craft
| | 01:12 |
photography is the same way.
When you take a really great photograph,
| | 01:15 |
it's up to you to tell people that it
exists, and there are a couple of ways
| | 01:19 |
that we can do this.
First of all, we can add tags and
| | 01:23 |
metadata to our individual craft photos
after we've taken them.
| | 01:29 |
So, that's what we're going to do right now.
On your screen, there's a photograph of a
| | 01:33 |
wall-mounted succulent garden that I
made.
| | 01:37 |
Right now it's just sitting on a giant
rain gauge in my backyard, drying out,
| | 01:41 |
before I hung it up on a wall.
So, I would like this particular image to
| | 01:46 |
get picked up by some of the major search
engines.
| | 01:50 |
And while each search engine has its own
secretive algorithm, as far as what they
| | 01:55 |
are looking for, to choose which images
become the most popular and the most well seen.
| | 02:03 |
I can be proactive and really get this
image out in front of eyeballs by going
| | 02:09 |
file, file info and hanging out here on
the IPTC tab.
| | 02:15 |
Now, this is a tab I briefly mentioned in
another movie when I was talking about
| | 02:19 |
copyright information.
So, you would go ahead and put your blog,
| | 02:24 |
your name and any other contact
information that you felt comfortable
| | 02:28 |
with, here in this panel, and it would be
embedded into the photograph's meta data.
| | 02:34 |
So, that if somebody else sent your photo
off into world, it would still be yours.
| | 02:39 |
It would still show up as yours if
somebody took a look at the actual
| | 02:42 |
metadata of the file.
Now, what I didn't mention in that movie
| | 02:47 |
is that if you scroll way, way down here
into IPTC Content, you have the ability
| | 02:52 |
to add keywords.
And keywords are just like sending
| | 02:57 |
invitations out for a dinner party.
You want to be very explicit about when,
| | 03:02 |
where, what, why, and how.
So, go crazy with these keywords but do
| | 03:07 |
be specific and very, very focused in
what you're saying.
| | 03:11 |
So, I'm going to add a few keywords here and
these are going to help make my image more
| | 03:15 |
searchable through search engines, and
it's also going to allow my images to be
| | 03:19 |
more searchable on my own hard drive.
But first of all I'm going to go ahead and
| | 03:26 |
just add a few key words just to show you
how descriptive I want to be.
| | 03:32 |
So, I'm going to go ahead here and just
start typing away.
| | 03:36 |
Now, I've just made a small spelling
| | 03:41 |
error as I was typing.
And when that happens, that word is
| | 03:48 |
basically rendered useless.
So, be sure that you're paying attention
| | 03:56 |
to your spelling as you are typing.
| | 04:03 |
Okay.
So, now I've got some meta data in here.
| | 04:10 |
I've added some keywords, gardening,
succulents, wall mounted, vertical
| | 04:19 |
garden, urban garden, wooden box, Ikea,
container, container garden, arid, Rod
| | 04:28 |
Megan, and Megan Anderson.
So, I've added a few things here that
| | 04:37 |
will lead this image back to me.
And when I click OK, I'm embedding this
| | 04:41 |
information right into the content, right
into the data, into the soul of this image.
| | 04:47 |
And wherever this image ends up, those
key words are going to stick with it,
| | 04:51 |
making it more searchable when I upload
it.
| | 04:55 |
Now, that's one way to add keywords just
to the image itself.
| | 05:00 |
Now that we have this image, we're going to
go ahead and save it.
| | 05:05 |
And upload it to Flickr, to Pinterest, to
any number of photo sharing and social
| | 05:11 |
networking sites.
And when we do that, we are going to
| | 05:16 |
have, in most cases, the opportunity to
add even more keywords.
| | 05:23 |
So that the members of the community that
you have uploaded this photo to can also
| | 05:28 |
more easily search this image.
So, I'm going to do that right now.
| | 05:33 |
I'm going to open up a web browser and
navigate on over to Flickr.
| | 05:40 |
Flickr is just a photo sharing website
and we have already uploaded one
| | 05:44 |
photograph here.
And now, I'm going to upload one more.
| | 05:49 |
So, I'm going to come back here to my home
and I'm going to upload another photograph.
| | 05:59 |
I am going to find my image and here it
is, upload it to Flickr.
| | 06:09 |
So, this image is now uploading.
| | 06:15 |
And now that it's finished, I definitely
want to add a description because in
| | 06:21 |
search engine optimization, it's not just
the metadata.
| | 06:29 |
It's not just the tags we give our
photograph within a specific website.
| | 06:39 |
It's also searchable by the description,
by the title.
| | 06:43 |
Any text that is associated with this
particular image is going to help it
| | 06:48 |
become searchable.
So, I am going to go ahead and say, wall
| | 06:53 |
mounted, succulent garden.
It's not wall mounted right now and it's
| | 06:57 |
just lying flat.
I know that wall mounted, succulent
| | 07:01 |
garden, is probably going to get more
views than just succulent garden because
| | 07:06 |
I happen to know that wall mounted
succulent gardens are very hip right now
| | 07:11 |
in urban gardening.
So, you'll notice that when we scroll
| | 07:18 |
down to tags, all of those tags that I
added to my image back in Photoshop are
| | 07:24 |
now here in Flickr.
So, those tags completely carried over
| | 07:31 |
and that is fantastic.
That really cuts down our work.
| | 07:34 |
So, I'm just going to add a quick
description.
| | 07:36 |
| | 07:45 |
Okay.
So, I've got my tags here and I've got my
| | 07:50 |
description and I have my title.
So, I'm going to go ahead and check to see
| | 07:55 |
if I already have a set for this.
I only have terrarium.
| | 08:00 |
So, right now, I'm going to create a new
set, just to give it an additional level
| | 08:05 |
of searchability.
So, let's see.
| | 08:08 |
This is going to be called small gardens,
because I know for a fact that that is
| | 08:13 |
another very trendy thing right now.
Container gardening in Southern
| | 08:19 |
California, because that is were I live
and that specific piece of information is
| | 08:25 |
also going to become a search term that
people might look out for.
| | 08:32 |
So, I've got that put together and I just
have to hit save in order for this image
| | 08:38 |
to be uploaded and here we go.
So, now I have my wall mounted succulent
| | 08:44 |
garden, a vertical garden I made from an
Ikea box, and some succulent clippings.
| | 08:48 |
And when I click on it, I can see all of
these different tags.
| | 08:53 |
And now, when I hover over these within
Flicker, I have the option to see if I
| | 08:58 |
have any other photographs that share
this tag wall mounted or if anybody else does.
| | 09:06 |
And by anybody else, I mean the thousands
of people who are using Flickr.
| | 09:11 |
So, this is a really cool way just to add
searchability to your individual photo,
| | 09:15 |
both within the metadata of the image
itself as we're processing it, and then
| | 09:20 |
by adding it online.
And now, if you wanted to take this one
| | 09:25 |
step further, you could go ahead and
upload this photo to Blogger.
| | 09:31 |
And if you wrote a specific post about
this succulent garden, you would have the
| | 09:35 |
option to add an entire new string of
tags and that would be yet another layer
| | 09:40 |
of text based information attached to
this photograph, making it even more
| | 09:44 |
searchable within the giant search engine
network.
| | 09:51 |
And all of these things, all of these
places, the more care you put into naming
| | 09:55 |
your photograph, the higher the chances
that it's going to be noticed by more people.
| | 10:01 |
So, you've taken a lot of care to
photograph your craft.
| | 10:04 |
Now, really get it out into the world by
taking a couple of extra steps and just
| | 10:09 |
naming it properly and giving it some
tags and you're going to get some great
| | 10:13 |
results through search engine
optimization.
| | 10:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sending high-resolution images| 00:02 |
At some point, you're probably going to
find yourself in the position of either
| | 00:05 |
wanting or needing, to send high
resolution images to a publisher or printer.
| | 00:11 |
Now the days of sending your images on a
CD are long gone.
| | 00:15 |
In fact some of you might not have even
considered that option simply because
| | 00:19 |
it's so slow to burn your images to a CD
and then actually mail them or
| | 00:23 |
hand-deliver them.
A lot of times, you will be asked to FTP
| | 00:28 |
your images, and that's just a way to
transfer files from one computer to
| | 00:32 |
another via the Internet.
Now if you're working with a printer or a
| | 00:37 |
very small organization that either
doesn't know how to use an FTP or doesn't
| | 00:42 |
have one set up.
There's a great way to share high
| | 00:46 |
resolution images with another company or
another person without having to get too
| | 00:51 |
terribly technical.
So to accomplish this I'm going to open
| | 00:55 |
up my Web Browser.
And I'm going to open up a new page, and
| | 01:00 |
I'm going to go to a website called
yousendit.
| | 01:05 |
And this is such a cool service.
I have used this several times, and
| | 01:09 |
what's great about this is that you can
either sign up to become a premium
| | 01:14 |
member, or you can use it for free and
just send one individual item at a time.
| | 01:21 |
So, I've got this folder filled with my
garden images that need to be published,
| | 01:25 |
and as you can see, they're pretty large,
so I don't know if I would really want to
| | 01:29 |
email these, and I don't know if my
publisher or printer would really
| | 01:33 |
appreciate me emailing these.
You don't want to just assume that
| | 01:39 |
somebody has all the space in the world
in their email box, and then clog it up
| | 01:42 |
with all your stuff.
Unless they ask you to.
| | 01:47 |
Now, if they don't, then try to look for
another option, and here's one that I
| | 01:51 |
recommend, and what I like about this is
that you can send a single file, but if
| | 01:56 |
you have more than one image, you can
easily right-click your file, hit
| | 02:00 |
Compress the images and you're going to get
this little zip file.
| | 02:08 |
Now, this is not necessarily a Compressed
file in the sense that it won't get too
| | 02:14 |
much smaller.
If I right-click and find out how large
| | 02:18 |
this zip file is, it's about the same
size that those four images were, so
| | 02:22 |
that's not really much smaller at all,
but now it is a single file.
| | 02:29 |
So I'm going to go ahead and use one of my
email addresses to send a file, to, my
| | 02:36 |
printer and for the sake of this movie my
printer is going to be me.
| | 02:47 |
Now, all I need to do is just type in my
printer or publishers email address where
| | 02:54 |
designated, and tell them who it's coming
from.
| | 03:01 |
Select my File > deadlineimages.zip.
And then I can opt to sign up for a free account.
| | 03:12 |
So I'm going to go ahead an do that right
now.
| | 03:14 |
And confirm.
And now I'm just going to go for it, great,
| | 03:23 |
okay, so.
Here I have the option to add a subject.
| | 03:29 |
And a message.
And for the free option I can verify even
| | 03:53 |
that my images have been sent.
So I'm going to skip this pay per use
| | 03:58 |
delivery because I just want to try this
out and see if it works.
| | 04:02 |
And I'm going to hit Send.
Now, this is going to go ahead and
| | 04:07 |
process all ten megabytes of my image.
What this website is doing is basically
| | 04:14 |
just optimizing the file.
It's not damaging any pixels, it's not
| | 04:18 |
degrading my photographs in any way, but
it's just compressing the file so that it
| | 04:23 |
can be sent.
Now I now have a link to verify that my
| | 04:28 |
image was sent.
If I checked my email, my, both my sent
| | 04:33 |
email and the email address that I used
to send this file to would be there.
| | 04:38 |
I can click this url and make sure that
my file has been sent.
| | 04:42 |
But if I go ahead and check my email, I'm
going to see a confirmation email that
| | 04:46 |
says, Dear Meagan and my entire message
that I sent so If you're working with a
| | 04:50 |
client that maybe doesn't use an FTP
server, and you don't want to make them
| | 04:54 |
feel bad about either not having the
technology, or you just need a quick way
| | 04:58 |
to send large photos, there are lots of
websites that can help you do it.
| | 05:06 |
This is one that I use, and I really like
it.
| | 05:09 |
And if you really like it too then you
can go ahead and sign up and you'll have
| | 05:14 |
a lot more functionality but for now
that's a great way to share huge files in
| | 05:18 |
a quick amount of time for free.
| | 05:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Uploading Images for Blogging, Selling, and PrintingSelling your crafts| 00:00 |
For me, starting an online store went a
little something like this.
| | 00:06 |
Step one, make a craft.
Step two, take photos of that craft.
| | 00:11 |
Step three, sell the craft.
So what do you need to sell the craft?
| | 00:17 |
We've already talked about how to
photograph the craft, and if you're
| | 00:20 |
watching these videos, chances are you're
already pretty crafty and know how to
| | 00:23 |
make your own brand of craft.
So, when I say step three is sell our
| | 00:28 |
craft, well, what do we need to do?
First of all, we need a vehicle or a platform.
| | 00:35 |
And that can be trade shows, craft shows
local stores, mailing lists, or online
| | 00:41 |
stores like Big Cartel and Etsy.
Now, the benefit with using an online
| | 00:48 |
store like Etsy, is there is just about
no overhead.
| | 00:52 |
You have to pay a very very minimal fee
to actually become a vendor on Etsy, and
| | 00:56 |
once you do that, there's all kinds of
functionality that allows you to tag your
| | 01:00 |
craft with specific key words.
Set your price for domestic shipment, set
| | 01:07 |
your price for international shipment,
create miniature stores that you can put
| | 01:12 |
on your blog or on Facebook.
And there's also a built-in audience,
| | 01:18 |
Etsy is used by thousands of people.
And while they might not all immediately
| | 01:25 |
find your store, chances are interested
parties are going to find your craft on a
| | 01:29 |
large website like this quicker than they
might.
| | 01:34 |
If you were just selling your crafts as
one offs on your own private website,
| | 01:38 |
simply because Etsy is such a large
community and there is so much
| | 01:42 |
functionality already built into the
website, that it really does make it easy
| | 01:46 |
for you to take advantage of their social
networking, and various marketing opportunities.
| | 01:55 |
So right now we're looking at my Rad
Megan store on Etsy, and I just want to
| | 01:59 |
point out a couple of my favorite things
that you can do here.
| | 02:04 |
So, First of all, when you set up your
own Etsy page, you are able to create a
| | 02:08 |
profile, and that just gives vendors a
little bit of information about who you are.
| | 02:16 |
And from there, it's up to you to add as
many products to your store as you would like.
| | 02:22 |
So here, you can see just a few of the
crafts that I have available right now
| | 02:27 |
and they are sorted by the most recently
updated.
| | 02:33 |
So just a couple of months ago I had this
PDF instruction panel for how to make
| | 02:37 |
your own wall-mounted succulent.
You can see how many views each of your
| | 02:42 |
items is getting.
You can see how many people have claimed
| | 02:45 |
you for their circle, which just means
that they like visiting your store and
| | 02:49 |
they like what you do.
You can also see what kind of feedback
| | 02:53 |
you're getting.
And that's really important to me because
| | 02:57 |
when I was selling crafts in my own
store, through my own domain, I wasn't
| | 03:00 |
able to tell other people, hey, I'm a
trusted vendor.
| | 03:04 |
People are liking what I'm providing.
I ship my crafts in a timely manner.
| | 03:09 |
I package them in a cute way.
You know all the little fun things that
| | 03:13 |
really make getting a hand made treat in
the mail extra special.
| | 03:17 |
So, having a feedback button is really
helpful for making sales, and just
| | 03:21 |
presenting yourself in a professional
way.
| | 03:25 |
Now Etsy also has a couple of things up
here, where once you start developing
| | 03:29 |
your own circles, your own groups of
people that you like following and
| | 03:32 |
favorite crafts that you enjoy.
You can see what kind of activity people
| | 03:38 |
are up to and whether or not your crafts
have been featured.
| | 03:43 |
So if you click this button you can see
activity, which just means who has
| | 03:46 |
favorited your item, who has recently
purchased your item and who may have
| | 03:50 |
included one of your crafts in a
collection that would be more public,
| | 03:53 |
that more people on Etsy could see.
You're also able to have private
| | 03:59 |
conversations with people, so if somebody
wanted to buy one of my crafts but they
| | 04:03 |
had a specific request, like they wanted
this ring in a certain size, then they
| | 04:07 |
could communicate with me directly
through this button.
| | 04:12 |
I can also see which crafts I've favored
and who has favored my own crafts.
| | 04:17 |
And then within account settings, I am
able to do all kinds of things like put
| | 04:21 |
my store on vacation load when I go out
of town, I can remove some of the crafts
| | 04:25 |
that I have for sale, I can deactivate
them, I can reactive older listings that
| | 04:30 |
have gone inactive.
They're all kinds of things that you can
| | 04:36 |
do with Etsy and it's a really great way
just to get your established as a craft
| | 04:40 |
vendor, especially if you have a
collection of these great craft photos
| | 04:44 |
that you've been taking.
Now whether you use this particular
| | 04:50 |
website, create your own website where
you're selling your crafts or whether
| | 04:55 |
you're just thinking about making the
leap, to selling your crafts online.
| | 05:01 |
In my opinion, the most important things,
to think about, when you are selling a
| | 05:05 |
craft that you've made to somebody else,
after the quality of the craft itself Is
| | 05:09 |
really think about the photos that you're
putting up.
| | 05:14 |
Do they represent the item well?
Do they represent you well?
| | 05:18 |
And think about the description that
you're writing.
| | 05:20 |
Really take care to put something
together that's going to catch attention,
| | 05:24 |
might have an element of humor and really
does make it a memorable experience.
| | 05:30 |
And beyond that just be a good vendor,
ship your items on time.
| | 05:34 |
Give feedback when somebody asks a
question.
| | 05:38 |
And if somebody does include one of your
crafts in a public treasury where more
| | 05:42 |
people have access to photographs of
things that you've made, reach out and
| | 05:46 |
thank them, just be polite when selling
your crafts online.
| | 05:51 |
It's a really good way to just network
and make friends online with other
| | 05:54 |
crafters, and then once you've
established a good relationship with
| | 05:57 |
people, you can ask them even more tips
about successful things that they've
| | 06:01 |
tried and different sales techniques.
But if you start out with good clean
| | 06:07 |
photos and a clear description, you're
going to be on the path to success for
| | 06:11 |
selling your crafts online.
| | 06:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selling your shots| 00:02 |
After all the success of selling your
crafts online you may get to the point
| | 00:06 |
where you want to sell your craft photos
and you can do that in a couple of
| | 00:10 |
different ways.
First of all, you could pitch your photos
| | 00:15 |
to various magazines as product shots.
Magazines are always looking for new content.
| | 00:20 |
And if you find the correct person within
the magazine the decision maker, whether
| | 00:25 |
it's somebody in marketing or
advertising.
| | 00:28 |
Take a look at the magazine, really get
an idea for what kinds of things they
| | 00:32 |
sell and what kind of style they have,
and if your craft photos are a good match.
| | 00:39 |
It never hurts to call the main number of
the magazine and just kind of ask, just
| | 00:43 |
talk to the receptionist and ask to find
out who is the decision maker, and who
| | 00:47 |
you could talk to about pitching your
photos.
| | 00:52 |
Now after you have the right contact
person, you are going to want to assemble
| | 00:57 |
a few, like only a few, three or four of
your very, very, very, very best shots to
| | 01:01 |
either email this person or physically
mail.
| | 01:07 |
Now, regardless of whether or not you
email your photos or you print them out
| | 01:11 |
on a nice, hard, thick card stock or
paper stock and mail them in.
| | 01:16 |
You still need to write a cover letter
with your name, your contact phone
| | 01:21 |
number, email address and mailing
address.
| | 01:24 |
Make it very easy for these people to
contact you.
| | 01:27 |
Magazine editors are busy people and they
do not want to go searching for your
| | 01:31 |
contact information, even if they really
like your photos.
| | 01:35 |
So, when you send in your photos, whether
it's.
| | 01:37 |
Through email or through snail mail.
Try to make it as easy as possible for
| | 01:42 |
somebody to hire you.
Now another thing I would suggest is to
| | 01:46 |
make a web portfolio to link to.
And you could even do that with something
| | 01:51 |
like Flickr.
I just created a very simple set and I
| | 01:54 |
put a few photographs of some of my
terrariums and water gardens in there.
| | 01:59 |
And you could easily point somebody just
to a very clean, crisp, uncluttered set
| | 02:04 |
on Flickr or you could make your own
individual webpage off of your site.
| | 02:10 |
And only put the things that that
particular magazine would be interested
| | 02:15 |
within that set.
If there's a particular article or some
| | 02:20 |
series or a specific issue this magazine
is running, think about what kinds of
| | 02:24 |
photos they would want for that piece.
Be very concise, be relevant, be
| | 02:30 |
thoughtful when you are pitching your
photograph because you really want the
| | 02:34 |
magazine to see that you are looking out
for them.
| | 02:39 |
You are trying to make their content even
better.
| | 02:42 |
And also, when you're working with a
magazine, when you're, you're just
| | 02:46 |
pitching your work you don't necessarily
have your foot in the door, be
| | 02:50 |
persistent, but also be polite.
It's just as easy to ignore somebody as
| | 02:56 |
it is to give them a chance, so if you're
emailing somebody once a week, if you're
| | 02:59 |
calling them once a week.
That's a great way to stay in the front
| | 03:05 |
of somebodies mind, but walk that fine
line between being annoying and just
| | 03:08 |
being really available.
So those are some things that I would say
| | 03:13 |
to think about when your pitching your
photos to a magazine.
| | 03:18 |
Now another way that you can sell your
craft photos is through stock
| | 03:23 |
photography, and there are a bunch of
different stock photography companies out there.
| | 03:33 |
I'm sure you probably know about
iStockphoto, Getty Images, Corbis Images,
| | 03:35 |
there are tons of different stock
photography websites.
| | 03:37 |
Now one thing you can do to license your
digital photography, license your craft
| | 03:42 |
photography, is if you are using a photo
sharing site like Flickr.
| | 03:47 |
If you go to a specific photograph and
you say yeah I love this photo and I
| | 03:52 |
really think that Getty Images would
totally love it too, then you can scroll
| | 03:56 |
down to this owner setting area and click
Want to License Your Photo Through Getty Images.
| | 04:04 |
Here you have the option to allow Getty
Image editors to see your work.
| | 04:09 |
And potentially invite you to license
your digital photography through them.
| | 04:14 |
So, that's one way that you can do it if
you are using a photo sharing website
| | 04:18 |
like Flickr.
But if you just have a collection of
| | 04:21 |
images that you think would make great
stock photography that would look good in
| | 04:25 |
advertising in different places.
Do the same thing that you would do for a
| | 04:29 |
magazine and put together your very best
works.
| | 04:33 |
And then pitch it to these different
places the I Socks, the Getty, Fotolia,
| | 04:37 |
Corbis, there are so many different
places, and if one turns you down then
| | 04:40 |
there's no reason that you can't pitch
your work to another.
| | 04:46 |
But also if their giving you feedback
like, I like this photo but this other
| | 04:49 |
one needs a little work, or we're looking
for something a litte bit brighter, don't
| | 04:53 |
take it personally.
Take those changes into consideration and
| | 04:58 |
turn around with something that they can
use and can therefore pay you for.
| | 05:03 |
So those are just a couple of ways that
you can sell your craft photography, in
| | 05:07 |
addition to selling your crafts.
Think about magazines and think about
| | 05:12 |
stock photography.
And just always try to present yourself
| | 05:17 |
in the most professional light, be
persistent, and be polite, and hopefully,
| | 05:22 |
we'll all see your craft photos showing
up in magazines, and in advertisements
| | 05:28 |
via stock photos, someday very soon.
| | 05:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Images for blogging| 00:02 |
In this movie I want to talk about images
used in blogging.
| | 00:08 |
When I started my craft cooking and
gardening blog there were a few things I
| | 00:12 |
noticed right away.
First of all when I am posting a new
| | 00:17 |
blog, I usually open with an image and
then write a little something about that
| | 00:22 |
image below it.
And I find that that's a good way to
| | 00:28 |
really draw the viewer in to whatevers
going on.
| | 00:33 |
Well I'm sure we're all very interesting
writers and crafters many people do just
| | 00:38 |
kind of skim through the images on a
blog, and if there isn't something pretty
| | 00:42 |
compelling, then they might just keep on
scrolling.
| | 00:47 |
So opening with a specific image is a
good way to kind of draw the viewer in
| | 00:51 |
and just tell them what this post is
about.
| | 00:56 |
Now another thing that I like to think
about when I'm blogging is how my
| | 00:59 |
photographs are going to look against my
blog.
| | 01:03 |
So in this photo right here, I've got a
nice dark image and it looks great
| | 01:07 |
against my blog with this really dark
background.
| | 01:12 |
But then when you scroll down, I do have
this white area where all of my text goes.
| | 01:17 |
But sometimes if I don't have a great
deal of contrast, the photos don't really
| | 01:21 |
pop out as well as they might.
So thinking about how your, your images
| | 01:26 |
are going to look on your blog is a very
important thing to do, because if it's
| | 01:31 |
not super compelling then viewers may
just pass it by.
| | 01:36 |
And come back and visit your blog another
day.
| | 01:39 |
Now, if you're blogging about something
that has individual steps.
| | 01:43 |
Let me go to a post with some individual
steps.
| | 01:47 |
I'm just going to come up here, and search
my blog.
| | 01:50 |
Which has some nice functionality that
you can have within blogger.
| | 01:53 |
And I'm going to type in candle.
And when I do that I have a variety of
| | 02:03 |
options that appear.
And I'm going to click right here and
| | 02:09 |
once I click that link, this post shows
up where I teach viewers how to make
| | 02:14 |
candles in reusable Altoid tins.
So if you have a blog post that's
| | 02:21 |
actually showing steps on how to make
something, numbering your images and also
| | 02:25 |
writing a very brief detail about that
image is a really good idea.
| | 02:31 |
Just because, like we just mentioned,
sometimes people do skim through blog
| | 02:35 |
posts, and showing them right away, right
up front, what they're in for is a great
| | 02:39 |
way to just reel them in.
So, if you're not really a fan of text on
| | 02:44 |
photographs, this is a case where I would
say it's probably a good idea to make an
| | 02:48 |
exception, just because sometimes people
will scroll through and find out exactly
| | 02:52 |
how many steps are involved in the craft
before they actually want to go ahead and
| | 02:56 |
take it on or not.
Another thing to think about when you
| | 03:02 |
have images that are on your blog is, you
would often benefit from putting metadata
| | 03:04 |
within each image on your specific blog.
So, if these photographs end up somewhere
| | 03:12 |
else completely, then they can always be
tied back to your blog.
| | 03:23 |
And adding metadata is very straight
forward, it is something that you can do
| | 03:26 |
within the file info of your photograph,
if you're using photo shop.
| | 03:31 |
So, look for that, and add information
that's going to bring viewers back to you.
| | 03:36 |
So your website, your name, and any key
words that link back to who you are and
| | 03:40 |
what you do.
Lastly, one of the cool things about
| | 03:44 |
blogger, is that when you have a new
post, that you have just uploaded, you
| | 03:49 |
can be your own marketer.
And you can either email this post to
| | 03:55 |
somebody else, send it through gmail.
You can blog it.
| | 04:01 |
If you, if this isn't your blog.
And you, you're finding something on
| | 04:05 |
another person's blog that you really
like, you can, of course, Tweet it put it
| | 04:08 |
on Facebook and share it on Google Buzz.
Now, there are a whole bunch of these
| | 04:13 |
different little, tags and buttons, where
you could share images to stumble upon or
| | 04:17 |
dig, all kinds of options.
Though, once you complete a post it's
| | 04:23 |
really a great idea to just put it out
there in to the world so that other
| | 04:27 |
people know that you have written a new
post.
| | 04:31 |
Now, if you can remember to think about
the composition of your image and the way
| | 04:35 |
it looks against your particular
background, whether it has a nice
| | 04:39 |
contrast, or just blends in with the rest
of the layout.
| | 04:44 |
And also, adding steps and summaries to
how to blog post, and also adding medadata.
| | 04:51 |
And then your going end up with at least
a great backbone of images that you can
| | 04:55 |
use in your blog.
And as long as your considering your
| | 04:59 |
composition, and your exposure and really
taking care to produce the most colorful
| | 05:03 |
and interesting photographs that you can,
your going to end up with a really happy
| | 05:07 |
base of followers.
And perhaps some awesome sponsors who are
| | 05:12 |
paying for advertising on your blog.
The more care and time you put into your
| | 05:16 |
blog posts and your blog photographs, the
more people are going to respond and give
| | 05:20 |
you feedback, and let you know that they
are interested in what you're making.
| | 05:27 |
And I would say too, that having
something like this, this little third
| | 05:30 |
party link within widget at the base of
your blog.
| | 05:34 |
If you have the opportunity to do
something like this, that is a cool way
| | 05:38 |
to grab a viewer, just based on your
photo alone, and take them to another
| | 05:41 |
blog post that they may be interested in.
And so, that's just as simple as adding a
| | 05:48 |
little bit of code into the functionality
of your blog, and you can do that.
| | 05:54 |
I'm going to scroll up here, you can do that
by editing the design of your blog and
| | 05:58 |
arranging different widgets and gadgets
and, and adding various functionality
| | 06:03 |
that blogger provides.
So, those are just a couple of things, a
| | 06:09 |
couple of tips about creating images for
your blog, and how to make your blog
| | 06:13 |
images really successful and work for
you, and most of all work for your readers.
| | 06:20 |
And with those tips hopefully you'll be
able to come up with some really cool
| | 06:24 |
photographs that reflective your blog
style, your passion, make you happy and
| | 06:29 |
also make your readers happy.
| | 06:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Images for exposure websites| 00:02 |
When you have a craft blog, or an online
store, you are often going to wear a lot
| | 00:05 |
of hats.
You're probably creating your own crafts,
| | 00:09 |
you're certainly photographing your own
crafts, you're staging the, the scene
| | 00:12 |
before you photograph it.
But then you're also selling your crafts
| | 00:17 |
so your thinking about your descriptive
text.
| | 00:20 |
And you also need to act as your own
Marketing team.
| | 00:24 |
So in this movie, I want to talk about
exposure.
| | 00:28 |
And I'm not talking about the exposure
you get from aperture and shutter speed.
| | 00:33 |
I'm talking about the exposure that your
images will give you as they become viral
| | 00:37 |
and go off into the world.
So there are a couple of websites, that I
| | 00:42 |
really like to use and, really look
forward and get excited about, when I see
| | 00:47 |
my own images on these particular sites.
So, the first that I have open right now
| | 00:54 |
is called Pinterest.
Like, put a pin in your interests.
| | 00:59 |
And I'm going to come to the main page here.
And basically, Pinterest is just a
| | 01:03 |
collective space.
Creative photographs are uploaded, and
| | 01:08 |
you can decide which ones you like, and
when you do like them You can go ahead
| | 01:12 |
and click repin and then place it in one
of your different boards or you can just
| | 01:17 |
create a new board, so I'm not going to
do that.
| | 01:23 |
Or you can also an image.
So these are not my images, these other
| | 01:28 |
images that people have liked and people
have shared, but if I search for my
| | 01:33 |
crafter name, which is Rad Megan.
I'm presented with a page of all these
| | 01:40 |
different crafts all these different
photographs that I've taken.
| | 01:45 |
These are my crafts and my blog images
and they've been pinned to this website
| | 01:50 |
by other people.
I don't know these people, I'm not
| | 01:54 |
friends in real life with these people
but they saw my images and they decided
| | 01:58 |
that they were good enough or interesting
or something that they wanted to recreate.
| | 02:04 |
They were compelling enough to post them
to this website, which is a huge
| | 02:08 |
compliment, but it's also a huge amount
of exposure.
| | 02:12 |
So while I don't have a watermark over
every photo that says Copyright Rad
| | 02:16 |
Megan, many of these images have metadata
embedded in them that say they're my
| | 02:21 |
photo, they have a link to my blog, to my
website.
| | 02:26 |
So when these images go off into the
world, they can have their own life, but
| | 02:31 |
they still have information that leads
them back to my site.
| | 02:37 |
Now that's the cool thing about these
websites.
| | 02:40 |
This Pinterest website is really neat
because most of these images, if you
| | 02:45 |
clicked on one of them, it would
automatically lead you back to my website.
| | 02:52 |
You can see your images, and then if you
click it, it automatically takes you back
| | 02:57 |
to the blog post or to the individual
page on your website, where this image occurs.
| | 03:05 |
So, here we are, we're looking at an
apple tart that I made, that made its way
| | 03:08 |
to Pinterest.
And I'm just going to scroll back up here,
| | 03:12 |
and close this page to get back
Pinterest.
| | 03:15 |
Well this website's really cool because
It will link your image back to your blog.
| | 03:21 |
You may have noticed on a lot of blogs
and websites there are these little
| | 03:25 |
badges and buttons where you can embed an
image into your own site or email it to
| | 03:29 |
somebody or submit it to a website like
StumbleUpon, Tweet it, Facebook it whatever.
| | 03:39 |
There are literally hundreds of these
little badges that will send this image
| | 03:43 |
off into another website, off into space,
for countless people to view.
| | 03:49 |
But if you don't have the, the metadata
and the tags embedded within the image,
| | 03:52 |
there's really no guarantee that these
people are going to know that this image
| | 03:56 |
came from my blog.
So, while Pinterest is a cool place, some
| | 04:01 |
of these other websites, like Tumblr, and
Reddit and StumbleUpon, don't necessarily
| | 04:06 |
give you an opportunity to say, hey, I
found this cool photo, and it belongs to
| | 04:11 |
Rad Meagan.
So that's just something to look out for.
| | 04:17 |
Adding metadata and also, potentially
adding a copy right or a watermark on
| | 04:21 |
your image will help keep it protected
when other people are sharing your images.
| | 04:28 |
Now, one of my favorite sites is
CraftGawker, and CraftGawker is a cool
| | 04:32 |
site because it's another creative
collective.
| | 04:36 |
It's similar to Pinterest in that there
are a whole variety of images when you
| | 04:41 |
come to the main page.
Photos that lead back to specific blog posts.
| | 04:47 |
But you can upload your own blog post
according to CraftGawker's specific.
| | 04:52 |
Terms and then if they review your image
and decide that it is both composed and
| | 04:57 |
lit and exposed properly and it's
relevant to what's going on, then they'll
| | 05:01 |
post it here.
And this is a really cool way to give
| | 05:06 |
yourself some exposure.
So this is another free site, I'm logged
| | 05:10 |
in as Rad Megan.
And when I click on my name, I come to my profile.
| | 05:15 |
Now, the reason I love CraftGawker so
much, is because they can really help you
| | 05:20 |
shape your photograph skills.
So, they have several websites, within
| | 05:26 |
quote-unquote, The Gawker Verse.
They have a Dwelling Gawker, a Wedding
| | 05:30 |
Gawker, and a Food Gawker, in addition to
CraftGawker.
| | 05:33 |
And all of these websites operate the
same way.
| | 05:36 |
When you submit an image to one of these
Gawker websites, they will ask you for a
| | 05:42 |
specific size, a link to that specific
post, a little description, and some tags
| | 05:48 |
or keywords.
Now once you've submitted that image it
| | 05:54 |
doesn't automatically get uploaded to the
homepage of CraftGawker.
| | 05:58 |
It has to be reviewed by some real human
people.
| | 06:02 |
And once it is reviewed they're either
going to accept or decline your image.
| | 06:07 |
So you can see that in the last six or
eight months I've had 17 images declined
| | 06:11 |
and 53 accepted.
If I click on the accepted list I can see
| | 06:17 |
exactly when I submitted it and when the
image was published.
| | 06:22 |
If I click on the individual title for,
for that particular craft, then it will
| | 06:27 |
take me to the page within my gallery
that has that craft featured.
| | 06:33 |
But I am going to go back here for a second.
I'm going to show you why this declined
| | 06:39 |
feature is so cool.
Now, admittedly, when I first found out
| | 06:42 |
about CraftGawker and I submitted my
first few crafts, I did get frustrated
| | 06:46 |
because sometimes they got accepted and
sometimes they got rejected.
| | 06:51 |
But then when I realized that they were
giving me feedback and helping me become
| | 06:55 |
a better photographer, I was overjoyed.
Now, a lot of times they're not going to
| | 07:01 |
give you very specific feedback on why
your image was or was not excepted.
| | 07:06 |
But usually it's something like, look at
your exposure, or your, your composition,
| | 07:11 |
but occasionally they will give you more
detailed Reason why it wasn't accepted,
| | 07:16 |
and there's no reason you can resubmit.
So you can just resubmit over and over
| | 07:23 |
again until you learn what makes a good
craft photo.
| | 07:27 |
So, again, they, Craftgawker's awesome
because they do this with the
| | 07:30 |
Dwellinggawker, the Dwellinggawker, the
Weddinggawker and the Foodgawker as well, so.
| | 07:36 |
If you were just starting out with your
craft photography.
| | 07:38 |
You could go to Craftgawker and kind of
get a little bit of an education in a
| | 07:41 |
real world setting.
And it's a very easy way to just put your
| | 07:46 |
craft photos out in front of your peers,
and see what they think.
| | 07:51 |
So, I get a lot of traffic from this
website, because I post to them fairly regularly.
| | 07:58 |
But that is me trying to make exposure
for myself, I'm trying to be my own marketer.
| | 08:05 |
And while Pinterest is a place that you
could just hope that other people are
| | 08:10 |
pinning your craft photos to their boards
and liking your images, you can also.
| | 08:18 |
Pin your own craft photos there as well.
But publishing to Craftgawker, or
| | 08:22 |
finding other websites that are like
this, where it's a collection of
| | 08:26 |
different people who are posting images
of their works, is a really great way to
| | 08:30 |
put yourself in front of the eyes of
other people with similar interest and
| | 08:35 |
like-minded experiences.
So, I love this site because it's full of
| | 08:41 |
crafters, so if they see an ideal that
they really like then they'll click on my
| | 08:45 |
image, and go to my blog, it's as simple
as that.
| | 08:49 |
So, as you're creating your craft photos
and writing up your descriptions of your
| | 08:55 |
various crafts for your online stores,
think about what kind of life your image
| | 09:00 |
could have after you publish it.
It might end up on a sight that has a
| | 09:07 |
really good policy about linking back to
your blog.
| | 09:12 |
Or it could just end up floating through
the ether via Reddit or StumbleUpon.
| | 09:17 |
So, protecting your image as much as
possible is one way to bring it back to
| | 09:20 |
you, one way to link it back to your
site.
| | 09:23 |
But also, the more exposure you give
yourself by uploading it to various.
| | 09:29 |
Collective websites like Pinterest and
Craftgawker.
| | 09:32 |
The more you can kind of brand your own
photography and develop your own
| | 09:37 |
photography style that can eventually
become recognizable to people.
| | 09:43 |
So those are just a couple of tips on
exposure and getting your craft photos
| | 09:47 |
out there and just kind of thinking about
being your own marketer.
| | 09:53 |
Being crafty and resourceful goes beyond
just putting together a cute craft, so
| | 09:57 |
when you're uploading your images and
when you're putting them out there,
| | 10:01 |
really just be mindful, be thoughtful,
about What kind of information you're
| | 10:04 |
embedding in your images, and keep an eye
out.
| | 10:10 |
Don't forget to Google yourself every
once in a while, or Google your craft
| | 10:13 |
name, and see what kind of images show up
there.
| | 10:15 |
You could find your photos, your craft
photos, on huge websites that you don't
| | 10:19 |
even know picked up your images.
One last note is that if you're using
| | 10:25 |
Flickr or another image sharing website,
you might get some requests from people
| | 10:29 |
who want to use your photograph in either
a freelance article or.
| | 10:36 |
On their blog post, and it's really nice
when they ask, because then you can
| | 10:39 |
usually link back and find that post.
But there are lots of people who won't
| | 10:44 |
ask, so regarding exposure, it never
hurts to Google yourself.
| | 10:48 |
Just check around online, and you know
your photos better than anyone else, so
| | 10:52 |
just keep an eye out.
Protect your intellectual property and
| | 10:58 |
enjoy the exposure.
| | 11:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Images for print| 00:02 |
In a world where everything is digital
it's sometimes nice to have a physical
| | 00:05 |
photograph in your hand that you can give
to somebody else.
| | 00:10 |
Either, just as a little gift, or to
network with via photo cards and very
| | 00:14 |
very beautiful business cards, or for
sale on your blog, for sale on your
| | 00:19 |
store, to use as a small gift or even to
put together a large scale book, and use
| | 00:24 |
it as a portfolio piece.
Having something that's printing can be a
| | 00:32 |
convenience but it's also something that
people keep around.
| | 00:36 |
They won't through out a photo-book or a
colorful business card right away and
| | 00:41 |
sometimes it's easy to lose a URL or a
link to an online portfolio.
| | 00:47 |
Printing out your images is a cool idea
and it's a fun way to really see your
| | 00:51 |
work in a new light so to speak.
So, there are a couple of websites that
| | 00:56 |
make printing your craft photos super
easy, Snapfish is one of them, Shutterfly
| | 01:01 |
is another, MOO is another.
They all have different areas of
| | 01:06 |
expertise, like these cool little MOO
cards that are great for networking.
| | 01:11 |
You can get a nice bound book through
Shutterfly, Snapfish has a variety of
| | 01:16 |
products like mousepads and posters and
smaller scale books.
| | 01:23 |
You can also make a really nice portfolio
piece on blurb, that's a great resource
| | 01:27 |
to use if you want to have a larger scale
book.
| | 01:31 |
Now the prices will range depending on
the style of book that you get or the
| | 01:35 |
style of printed piece on any and all of
these websites.
| | 01:40 |
But the overall quality is good so,
you're going to end up with a nice printed
| | 01:44 |
piece that you can, again, share or keep
for yourself, just to have a collection
| | 01:48 |
of your own craft photos printed out.
And the cool thing about using an online
| | 01:56 |
photo sharing website, like flickr for
instance, is that many of these online
| | 02:02 |
photo sharing sites are directly
connected with an individual printer so.
| | 02:11 |
I come to this page where I can see the
latest update, I can see my latest
| | 02:15 |
photographs in my photo stream.
But if I scroll over here to the right,
| | 02:21 |
where I would normally go to upload
photographs, and if I just scroll down a
| | 02:25 |
little bit there's this well phrased
link, Make Stuff With Your Photos.
| | 02:31 |
So, If I were to click on one of these
links, then flickr would take me
| | 02:34 |
automatically to a partnership page with
Snapfish, and that's one of the websites
| | 02:39 |
I mentioned earlier.
What's cool about this interface is that
| | 02:44 |
you can make prints, you can make photo
cards, books, et caetera very conveniently.
| | 02:50 |
If you have all your craft photos in one
specific photo sharing website, then it's
| | 02:55 |
really easy to just push your photographs
straight from flickr into the Snapfish
| | 03:00 |
interface, and they will give you all
their size requirements, and help you
| | 03:05 |
crop and rotate things, and it's really
quick and really easy.
| | 03:13 |
So if you are using a web-based photo
sharing site, and even if you're not, the
| | 03:16 |
interface is super easy, but if you are,
there's that extra added element of
| | 03:20 |
convenience, and really no good reason to
not get your photos printed out.
| | 03:26 |
It's so gratifying to be able to print
out a nice, craft photo that you've taken
| | 03:30 |
and put it up on the wall and share it
with friends.
| | 03:35 |
Digital is awesome and that's the world
we live in now.
| | 03:39 |
Blogs and websites and sharing things
digitally is quick, and easy, and super convenient.
| | 03:45 |
But with photography, and specifically
craft photography, a photograph that
| | 03:49 |
you've taken the care to really compose,
and have gotten the proper exposure, and
| | 03:53 |
there's an artistic value, and, more
importantly, it's a photograph of
| | 03:57 |
something that you made, with love, and
care, and all of your skill.
| | 04:03 |
That's something to be proud of, and
sharing that in your home or with friends
| | 04:07 |
in a physical way.
Being able to hand them a photo and say,
| | 04:10 |
I made that, and just show off your
skill, that's really a valuable thing.
| | 04:15 |
So, check out these different websites If
you are using a photo sharing website.
| | 04:20 |
Just explore, see if you want to go ahead
and get a few things printed.
| | 04:24 |
It's relatively inexpensive just to get a
few prints or like a spiral bound book
| | 04:29 |
printed up and seeing your craft photos
in print is going to be another level of
| | 04:34 |
gratification that I think you're going to
find really rewarding.
| | 04:42 |
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| Future scope and happy crafting| 00:01 |
First and foremost, I'm a crafter.
But like you, I understand how important
| | 00:05 |
digital photography can be to having a
craft business online, or blogging about
| | 00:08 |
your crafts, or even just sharing
photographs with your friends and family
| | 00:12 |
that they're going to love and want to see
more of.
| | 00:18 |
But the most important thing to think
about, when you're doing craft
| | 00:20 |
photography, is keeping it simple, so if
you can just remember these three things.
| | 00:25 |
Location, where are you shooting, are
inside, are you outside?
| | 00:29 |
Staging, what kind of craft did you make,
and how can you make it look better to
| | 00:33 |
get a great shot?
And also, your camera, how does it work?
| | 00:38 |
What do you need to get a really good
exposure?
| | 00:41 |
Just think about those three things:
Location, Staging, and your Camera, and
| | 00:45 |
you're going to be fine.
You're going to come up with some great
| | 00:49 |
crafting photographs.
I hope this course has helped you.
| | 00:52 |
I hope that you found it interesting, and
I hope that you've enjoyed it.
| | 00:55 |
We've had some beautiful backgrounds,
we've seen some neat crafts, and we've
| | 00:59 |
taken some cool pictures, so thanks for
watching.
| | 01:02 |
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