Picture taking...

Eventually I plan on opening another Etsy shop that has one of a kind items as well as clothing. I don't know when I'll be able to do it but in the meantime I've been drawing things up and otherwise dreaming.

I have a steampunk style mask that I made that I haven't listed to my Etsy yet because I kind of want it to be one of the first items in my potential shop. I photographed it today in the type of style I'm thinking that shop would be in. I would make one of these sepia colored photos the main photo and then have multiple full color photos to show the details and "real" look of the piece. I would photograph my other items in a similar way but not everything would be steampunk.

Here are the same photos in color. I was originally going to do my makeup but I could not find my makeup kit (it's been a long time since I last used it). I went ahead and did them anyway since I intended for the photos to be sepia-fied and my lack of makeup would be less noticeable. I wouldn't have done foundation either way because I don't want any makeup getting on the mask.

Can I just say that styling, photographing, and modeling all at the same time is quite a pain? I need to find someone willing to be my model and a person who actually knows how to use a camera. I did figure out how to work a tripod and timer though. I should have set up a mirror so I could keep from making the grumpy faces I tend to naturally do (I can't help it, my face just does that) and have some sort of pose going. I started feeling like all arms and legs while waiting for the camera to shoot. It's a weird sort of momentary panic-inducing anxiety to be in front of a camera about to shoot and not know if you're even in the shot.

I know very little about photography but I've found that I prefer to take pictures without flash whenever I can as it keeps makeup from looking really shiny and doesn't cast hard shadows. However, no flash means you need more light around or all you've got are shadows. Here I used a three light lamp with regular florecent bulbs (haha, I'm betting real photographers are shuddering right now) to add more light... it didn't work very well because all of the light I had was coming from one direction and resulted in a hard shadow anyway. I'm really just making stuff up as I go photo-wise. Maybe one day I'll get to take a photography class. By the way, the first picture accidentally had flash (I didn't turn it off), I don't know that you can tell the difference in this instance (especially since I didn't wear makeup) but it did result in my needing to correct the photo for red eye.