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I have a giveaway on offer further down but first lets talk photography. It’s been a while since I had time to do a Lime Light post, however, I’ve really appreciated the positive feedback I’ve had for these posts so thought I’d pop a ‘quick tip’ post in today. I talked previously about how I use natural light set to the left, with nice distance between card, background items and backdrop. Here’s a photo I shared previously:

One other simple item which can make a big difference to photographing a card is to use something to reflect light from the light source (window) back on to the shadowed side of the card. In my example this would be reflecting light from the window on the left and bouncing it onto the right side of the card. Now there are plenty of fancy photography reflectors available but for me, I grab a piece of spare white card and use that – readily available and the right price LOL. I simply place a large piece of white card to the right side of the card and parallel to the window.

The reflected light can fill in deep shadows, lightening them and giving a brighter feel to the card. One word or warning though, brightening the shadows can mean that items loose their dimension – shading allows the eye to see the level of an item relative to others around it. So the aim is to lighten the shadows but not eliminate them totally and flatten the appearance of the card.

So what difference does it make to a photograph? Here’s two examples the first taken without the reflector:

And the second taken immediately afterwards with a reflector:

I did not change any of the camera settings for the after shot. Isn’t it amazing how much lighter and brighter this picture is with lovely soft shadows? In fact so much light has been bounced back into the picture from the reflector that I’d say we have gone a little too far. If I was taking this picture with the intention of posting to here I’d probably now adjust my camera settings slightly to bring a bit more depth back in.

I spotted another example of reflecting light and also a little of what computer ‘wizardry’ can do on Attic 24 earlier in the year. Lucy is a British blogger concentrating on crochet and photographs of the lovely area she lives. She has a great written style, but for today if you scroll down about half way through the post you can see how her blue bunting was photographed for a magazine article. Hmmm, what we ‘see’ and reality are often two totally different things! However, the point to take is that in the photo shown, a reflector at the front bounced light back on to the scene being photographed.

Perhaps next time you take a photograph you will grab a piece of white card and experiment with the difference it can make? I’m working on the principle to try to make a small improvement in the way I take a photograph each time. The improvements can be tiny and may just be a better understanding of what doesn’t work in some cases! However, over time, I’m hoping those small improvements added together will make a noticeable difference to my photography skills. Baby steps, baby steps :D

Giveaway

Now before I go I wanted to host a little giveaway. Yesterday, on a whim I decided to make things easy for people to follow me by starting a Lime Doodle Design page on Facebook rather than using my personal profile. It’s a bit bare over there at the moment as I don’t know how to transfer FB updates to the new wall unfortunately. However, I put a quick note on Facebook letting people know what I’d done and everyone was so wonderful and jumped over there to Like the page. I feel so blessed that the community we are part of are so utterly awesome! So I rummaged through my ‘how did I manage to buy two of these piles!’ and put together this little thank you. While I’m trying new things I thought I’d do this as a Rafflecopter giveaway. It makes things easy for me and even picks the winner I believe! So fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter and thank you to all my friends here on the blog and over at Facebook :D

Simon Says Stamp Butterflies stamp set, Hero Arts Winter Trees Pattern Stamp, Lawn Fawn Into The Woods 6×6 paper pad, Teresa Collins Memorabilia pack of 4 washi tapes, Delicate Golden Glitz ink pad

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

SUPPLIES

You can find links to the supplies I’ve used below; click on the picture or wording to get taken directly to the product. Where available I use affiliate links which means if you make a purchase I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I truly appreciate your support.

InLinkz.com

InLinkz.com