Friday, November 5, 2010

No Light Equals No Posting

I really don't know what I'm going to do as far as lighting this fall and winter. Berlin's skies are dark and gray at least 6 months out of the year and those six months have just started. Our apartment also faces north (i.e. almost no direct sunlight) and is on the first floor so it's dark anyway.

I have this gorgeous vintage 1950s burgundy brocade dress I wanted to photograph today, but even in my old low-light standby, the stairwell of our building, the photographs were pretty blurry (though the color comes out beautifully....) The photograph below was taken in my "studio" in our bedroom. I could fix the crookedness easily with photoshop but restoring the color is a lost cause...

It makes me not even feel like posting things if I can't get a nice photograph. Then again, maybe I'm being too picky. My sister runs a vintage shop out of San Francisco and (she admits fully herself) can't take a photograph to save her life. And yet she totally outsells me. She's even sold things that were so blurry you could hardly even tell what they looked like. Then again, taking nice pictures and trying to create an ambiance is one of the things I love about having my shop. Sigh. Now only if the sun would come out....

3 comments:

  1. I would never post anything (and would thus be homeless or working in some office) if I had to rely on the natural light of Michigan.

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  2. I know how you feel! I have trouble taking good shots for my shop as well, and it frustrates me to no end. Except my problem is that my camera is terrible quality and about 7 years old! But I can't afford a new camera just yet *sigh*

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  3. Luckily I'm also a hobby photographer and have a pretty nice camera (maybe sometimes too nice actually. I'm just trying to get a photograph of some darn dress!) But I do have that natural light problem. Wish I could set up a real studio but we definitely don't have room for that in our apartment....

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