a peek behind the friendly curtain...

I've been taking a ton of pictures of my work lately because of all the stuff I knitted up for Art on Lark.  Not much of it sold (I'm going to cite the rain here and NOT my lack of experience or preparation!), so I'm ready to put it all on Etsy.  

Photography being my first love, it really excites me to break out the camera and shoot my knitted work.  I found an extremely useful tutorial here for a homemade light box, and as weird as Matt thinks I am every time I break it out, the pictures turn out beautiful every time!

So here is my little setup I've got right now on the back porch:

Yep, don't judge.  It REALLY is just a cardboard box with holes cut out of it, and some tissue paper taped on to diffuse the light.  That silver thing there is a piece of cardboard with a piece of aluminum foil (ohhhh yeah!) to bounce back some light into particularly dark and stubborn pieces of yarn.  I'm also using my ipod to prop up my iPhone, but it's cleverly hidden, because I'm sneaky like that :)

I used to use two hot lights on either side of the box inside on my kitchen counter clamped on to my kitchen chairs, but lately it's been light enough outside when I get home from work to flood the box with really pretty diffused light.  This is KEY for Etsy product shots, folks! Literally I just stick this box on a table out back, throw my items in it, and shoot away.  No matter how sunny it is, the box does all the hard work of diffusing the light so it's not so hard on my super awesome yarn!  I particularly like shooting on the macro mode on my point and shoot (that's right, I'm not even using my "nice" camera").

Aaaaand without further adieau (or is it ado?), the final product:

Fancy huh?

Hope this gets all your creative juices flowing.  It really is easy to get some really nice pictures with cardboard and tissue paper!