Bunny Bear Press: Bloggers Summer Camp Part 2

Yummy Smore's

Thank you again to etsyRain for sending me to School House Craft's Blogger's Summer Camp. I had a great time and met a lot of awesome people and learned about so many new websites that I am going to have to limit myself how many I can check out in one day so I dont get lost.

If you haven't read about my panel one take-aways go here.

During lunch all of the panelists split up among the tables to give smaller roundtable discussions. I wish I was able to go to each and every one, but I ended up zeroing in on photography tips, which was led by Andie Powers of Assemble. I just want to say that she is just a delight. I love her style and personality and she really knows what she is talking about. It is so great to hear that even the professionals use ghetto props to get the shot, and they don't have a professional studio taking their photos. This leaves hope for me. I am not the best at taking photos but I'm also not the worst!

Andie says the number one factor in taking great photos is the lighting. She recommends using shiny foam core to bounce light to get rid of hard shadows and to make your shots more evenly lit. She also recommended investing in a good camera (which thank goodness I already have) and a tripod (need to get).

She also recommends taking photos using natural light. This is a tough one for me. I feel that my home is unnaturally dark (I am surrounded by huge trees) and since I work late at night (and usually in my garage!) I never have natural light. For my situation she recommended getting some clamp lights and putting some parchment paper on them to act as a filter. The light bulbs are super important too and she advised me to get something with a daylight spectrum. I am going to talk with some photographers I have worked with in my past as a package designer and see what lightbulbs they think might work.

Another great tip she had for photos is to always take them in the same place. Consistency is something to be strived for in every brand and photography is no different. Even though photos are not graphics they are a huge part of the look and feel of your site and business identity. Taking consistant photos is key to a consistant pictorial voice.

The top 5 features to look for in every photo are:
1. Exposure
2. Shadows
3. White Balance
4. Saturation
5. Sharpness

A side tidbit for other bloggers: Andie also writes for Apartment Therapy and if she wants to use a photo she has sourced from somewhere online she will not use it if it has been watermarked. This is an eye opening piece of information for me. I thought this was something I should be doing to protect my intellectual property, but if watermarking my photos is losing me opportunities to increase my readership and reach then it's just not worth it.

Here are a few photos I took using Andie's advice. I am really happy with the results. I think I may need to find a better light bulb but that will be easy enough.