There are a few things that have made my knit blog photography better and better over the years.

Tips For Bettering Your Knit Blog Photography

Many of the knitters who read this blog post photos of their knitting projects on social media.

• Use the best lighting possible – Natural lighting is usually the best option. But it isn’t always possible to take every photo on a bright day with overcast so the sun doesn’t cast too harsh of a shadow. I experimented a lot to find the spot with the best lighting in our house. This happened to be one particular floor space near a sliding glass door. It’s right next to my office. On days like today, this spot is too dark. So I use artificial lighting and edit the photo after the fact.
• Interesting Staging – Sometimes laying a sweater or blanket flat on the floor is the best “staging” you can do. But even if that’s the best I can do, it isn’t for lack of trying multiple other options. I have mannequin busts and tall pedestal-like pieces of furniture I try and make use of. It’s also useful to use high-color backgrounds which can be done with poster-board.
• Cropping and Editing – One of my least favorite photos is a garment laid flat on the floor with the photographer’s feet in the photo. Cropping takes very little time. And there are tons of softwares out there that will help you make your photos look much better. It might take time to learn them, but it’s worth it.
• Depth of Focus – Simply put, this is just the area in front of your camera lens that is in-focus. If your camera allows you to determine which part of your photographed object is in focus, you can use it to make photos more interesting. Jared Flood used this to show off his designs extremely well when he first started designing knitwear.
• Take Lots of Photos – Digital photos take up very little storage and don’t waste film anymore. Take lots of photos from different angles. Put different objects in the photo.  Change the focal center using depth of focus techniques.

Current Knitting

Weather here has been gray and dark. And taking photos of a cardigan in progress is a challenge.  But I have been making progress!

In addition to adding some inches on to the right-front side of the sweater, I’ve also sewn in the pocket lining, added the pocket edging and knit a little bit of the button band to see how I like the contrast color.

While there are no feet in these photos, I blame the boring flat-on-the-floor-from-the-top photographs. I blame the dark gray skies and the return to standard time. Dark mornings make for difficult blog photography.

In fact, I keep delaying publishing the Primordial Sworls Wrap, because I can’t get any decent photos of it.