Before taking any pictures, I spend a lot of time choosing a background. I've learned that this is a very important part of taking good pics.
(Now, seriously, why the hell taking decent pics is soooo complicated and you have to think of soooooo many factors and I'm not a bloody photographer and I want to stitch not to take bloody pictures!!! - excuse me here, that was my inner child talking)
So the very first thing I've learned by trial and error - BIG error, sometimes - is that if you do not know that much about photography, stick with white. Maybe one beautiful day I will learn how to use other colours as well, but experiments so far proved to have disastrous effects.
Like pics of my Sea Inspirations necklaces (you can take a quick look
here to see what I mean). I've put them on the background made of little coral pieces, all natural, but kind of beigey-greyish colour. My noble idea was to create my very own beach (in a baking tray, heh heh). I still like the idea, but the pictures... Not impressive, to say the least. They do NOT catch the eye, and, unfortunately, on Etsy this is their function. Conclusion: 'coral beach' pictures that you can view now in my shop are the first and the last of the kind that you will see.
I'm sticking to white, then. But - there are whites and whites. I find the 'piece of paper' kind of white extremely boring (unless it's a really good quality, textured paper but that's another story..). I really liked the idea used by loads of Etsy sellers, which is to take the pics on an open book. For some reason it looks great - might be the bookworm inside me sympathising :) I do not enjoy copying somebody else's ideas, though, so as much as I admire this setting, I decided againt it.
I thought - what I'm looking for? White + texture. For the first batch of pictures I've found it in (mystery revealed...) an old shirt that I don't really wear that much. Or did I already write about it somewhere here? It's an old story anyway, and I wanted to publish some news, so here's another way in which I managed to get a background both white and textured.
Stitching canvas!! That was like a revelation. It definitely has texture - one that I very much like, too, very neat and elegant. Plus, it feels right, to present needlecraft goods on stitching canvas. It's like displaying tools of my craft.
There is a backside, though. When seen up close, the texture is magnificent, but give it some distance and it turns into ordinary boring white. I didn't find a way to get around that (yet!), but since I've spent an hour or so ironing the damn thing I'm dead set on using it in my pictures for quite a while now.
That is, until another idea arrives :)
