Background Noise

I do have a goal of posting here at least once a week. I actually have a lot of ideas running through my head but then they never seem to get transferred into the blog. Right now, I'm thinking a lot about how I want the site to look, what information I want to include and how to give it the feel that I'd like it to have.

You think this would be easy but it's really a lot to think about - at least for me.

However, even posting once a month is a big step up from where I was so I'll count it as baby steps.

There hasn't been a lot of knitting/designing in the last week. I've been doing a lot of researching on how to photograph knit items so they not only look amazing, but show what a person who might be considering the pattern needs to see to decide if the pattern is what they want.

This pdf, www.conradhoffman.com/photographing_your_knitting.pdf, turned out to be a great piece of information on the nuts and bolts of creating a photographers studio on a budget. The most helpful thing I found in this document was that he included pictures of both the photo set-up and the final polished copy. It was a great look into the process.

This post; www.dull-roar.com/2012/01/7-tacky-sins-of-pattern-photography.html also had some good tips - although be aware there is some swearing and a knit object that was definitely inappropriate although I found it really funny.

So, after my admittedly non-scientific research, I went out yesterday and got a tripod from  (which was less expensive than I was expecting) from Mike's Camera. The guy who helped me was really helpful in talking to me about the different tripods and what options were. What I found out is that it's a lot better to get a ball-joint on the top as then you can swivel your camera around in any configuration you want.  So now you know.

I also purchased some lights from Lowe's and some felt in black, white and gray from Jo-Ann's. I decided on the felt because:
(a) it was non-reflective
(b) it doesn't crease or wrinkle
(c) it was cheap! Which was a nice bonus.

So, if I can get all of this stuff working together, I fully expect that I should be able to produce photos that will stun and amaze the viewer (or at least show clearly what the end result of the pattern should look like).