Treasure Chest Thursday: Challenge – Baby Items

When I saw those darling baby booties and bib that A Patient Genealogist photographed recently for her blog, I decided to take the baby items challenge for Treasure Chest Thursday.

There are two, simple goals for this challenge: a) photograph your [artifact] and b) share what you learned about photographing the artifact.

Since my husband Michael still has a pair of his blue, lace-up baby booties, I went with those for the challenge.

For the first attempt, I placed the booties on a large white glossy background. Michael then photographed the booties using our Sony digital camera with the flash turned on. The booties appear too close in the photo, but their colour is realistic. This is a cropped, but otherwise, unenhanced version.


Booties, first attempt

For the second attempt, the booties are on the same background and with the flash on, but took the photo at about 12”. Colour and distance are acceptable.

For the third shot, Michael changed the program to “Intelligent Auto Adjustment”, but that resulted in losing control over some settings like the flash. I don’t really like the resulting photo, because the booties look dark and their colour is washed out.


Booties, third attempt

I tried the booties against a (medium) blue backdrop, but found that it didn’t do anything for them. The booties looked kind of lost, so I didn’t bother to haven them photographed.

All in all, I preferred the second attempt, so I made some adjustments to it with Picasa 3. The result is this version in which I cropped the photo and turned up the light.

Booties, improved version

It was fun doing this challenge, but next time, I'll try photographing in natural light (we photographed the booties under LED lights in the evening) with a larger white background.

But best of all, I’ve got a another photo to add to our family heirlooms book. In the last couple of years, I’ve photographed a few family heirlooms, wrote a description of the items on a ‘family treasures form’, and then put the photos and forms in a 3-ring binder. Two family heirlooms have already appeared on my blog: my Dad’s crucifix and my Mom’s high school entrance certificate.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.