Adventures in Quilt Photography Part 2

I remember shooting photos for my high school yearbook with a film camera, having to keep in mind the film budget, not knowing if the photos I took would actually be any good but also not wanting to waste film by just snapping away willy-nilly.  I'm so glad digital cameras came along!  I took over 100 pictures of my new quilts last week without any budget worries.  That doesn't mean I have 100 interesting or even 100 different shots.  As I took pictures with my phone camera, I looked at what I had just snapped, then took a new picture with minor changes I thought might improve the shot.

Being able to take a lot of shots has helped me recognize little things I can do to compose a better photo.  I still know squat about exposure but my composition is improving!

On Thursday I was limited to photos I could stage in my backyard.  The deck was my first location.  It needs a new coat of stain, but for my purposes, I'm just calling it "distressed for added textural interest".  Hmmm.  Right.  Well, I'm going with it anyway.

My first picture of Glacial was this one:

You can see the neighboring houses and firepit in the background.  That's rather distracting.  I could crop some of that out later, or I could sit down to take the picture and change the angle of the camera to just not have those things in the picture to begin with.  I adjusted the drape of the quilt a little as well. It bothered me that the blocks at the top were not quite in line with the railing, but close enough that it looked like that's what I had tried to do but messed up.  Picky, I know.  But I tweaked it anyway, so it looked deliberately askew.

I really liked this next one, with the wind blowing it out a little for extra movement and interest:

Before I could readjust to crop out the distractions, the wind helped out a little bit more and relocated the whole quilt.  It landed on Rosie.  You can see she wasn't impressed.

Since The quilt was on the decking now anyway, I spread it out there for a different layout.  Here's the area I was working with.

You can see I pushed a table out of the way.  There are a couple of chairs right behind my knees.  Of course, you have a lovely peek of the neighbour's house and garage as well.  Again, zooming in at just the right angle cuts out those distractions. It's too bad I cut off the corner!

At this point Rosie got a little bored.  I caught her in mid-yawn.  Not her best photo!

To change things up we headed to the back of the yard and tried some artful draping over a chair.

Not awful, but if anyone has any tips to share about artful draping, I'm all ears.

Finally, on the way back inside to grab the next quilt, I draped the quilt over the deck stairs railing.  Again, there were a few different attempts to straighten the quilt and crop out as many distractions as possible.

I think I could have cut out a little bit more of the eaves in the top right corner. And yes, this is the same quilt.  It's the "after quilt", "party in the quilt back", back of the quilt.  I had leftover bits to use up!

Next up will be placemats.  Spoiler:  I couldn't drape those over a railing...

In the meantime, Rosie insists I leave you with a more flattering picture than the two I shared above. 

Rosie inspecting one version of I Spy Lanterns

Visit my Etsy shop to get your copy of the Glacial or I Spy Lanterns patterns.