Check out this site!  I had lots of fun working with Julie!  And my cousin Melody did a fabulous job on the illustrated work.  So much detail was put into this project, and it turned out GREAT.  Have a peek!

-S

Yeah.. umm…. HELLO, can you say A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Photographer.  I just wish that Heather lived closer to me.  :)  I could have just put her pictures on a solid black background and it would have looked amazing.. but we decided to go with FUN!  I had a blast working on this blog for Heather.. and got to know a really amazing mom/wife/photographer in the process. She really rocks.

We worked up a nice splash page for her site as well.. go check out the rest of her photographs…  just amazing.

Have fun browsing… until next time.

-S

I will be ‘out of the office’ from Nov 2 to Nov 5th.  I will be checking mail, but not replying until the 6th of Novemeber!  Talk soon!

-S

RETURNING:  Friday - August 29th

I will of course have my trusty laptop with me, and I will check e-mail periodically, but will respond only to critical issues. All other e-mails will be answered upon my return on Friday evening.  Have a super week!

Until next time…

Shanna

Welcome to today’s lesson on Search Engine Optimization, also commonly referred to as SEO. Tell me if this sounds familiar? You’ve got a great website and great products to sell. Problem is you need customers. Word of mouth and referral business only go so far. If you’re going to make it, you need some help from search engines, such as Yahoo and Google. So how do you get good search engine placement so that potential customers can find you?

Here are 5 easy tips that will get you started:

Text, Text, Text!
Search engine robots can only read text. Repeat after me, search engine robots can only read text! They cannot read content embedded in images. They cannot read content embedded in Flash. So if you want your site to place well with search engines, you need to give them lots of relevant text.

Keep it Fresh!
Update your site often, especially your main page. This gives the search engine robots a reason to come back and re-index your site.

Use those Tags
If you have an e-commerce site or one that was built with CMS software, most likely there is a place where you can specify meta tags (title, description and keywords) for every category, subcategory, product and informational page. Use them or you are wasting SEO opportunities!

Ditch the Splash/Flash

This goes back to my first point that search engines cannot read Flash or images, which is typically how intro pages are created. Get rid of it! You want the first page that loads to be filled with content that gets updated regularly.

Incoming Links
This is probably the quickest way to improve your search engine rankings. Search engines rank sites based on the amount of relevant links that point to a site. Kind of like high school all over again, if a popular site links to your site, your search engine rankings will go up. My advice is to get out there are start networking.

So there you have it. You now know the basics of SEO. There is much more that can be done to increase your site’s visibility, but following my advice here is a good start. Watch for follow up articles on this subject with more tips and tools to help you better optimize your site.

Lots of colors!  The average length of each piece is 1500px or so.  Should be great for web… ok to use in print if you are using small pieces here and there.  You be the judge.  Free for all.  No restrictions.  Non commercial AND commercial is totally fine!  No need for a link back or anything… have fun using it.

Download DOTS .  Download POLKAS

Download SOLIDS .  Download STRIPES

Happy Saturday!  Until next time…….

-Shanna

Another fun site!  Jill is so awesome to work with.  She wanted something fun and flirty to compliment her flip flops… I think we nailed it.  You really must check her amazing crystal flip flops.  Worn by celebs all around tinsel town, they rock.  And, we even custom coded a ‘create your own’ page… so the sky is the limit when it come to color combos!!

-S

While I could go on forever, I have decided to treat this as a series. Today, I am going to run through a quick tutorial on how to take clothing pictures… with a little bonus ‘intro to Picnik‘. And, in the weeks to come, I will touch on how to snap some great shots of other kinds of products.

First, let me note, I do have a very nice DSLR camera, but all pictures for this tutorial were shot in the automatic mode. So, you can use your point and shoot camera and get the same results. So let’s begin already!

Step #1 - The Supplies

Make your way down to the local craft and hobby store and pick up a big piece of foam board (the kind used for school projects) and a couple of yards of felt. I used white felt today… however, you can use whatever color strikes your fancy… think about your website and what colors might look good with it. You should be able to walk out of the store spending no more than $10. Nifty, eh?

Step #2 - Iron Your Felt

Yes, I said that taboo word IRON!! I know, I don’t like to iron either. But the felt usually has a few fold lines from the craft store, and we need to take those out of the picture. (hehe)

Speaking of, let’s talk about felt for a minute. Why on earth am I suggesting you use felt? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The main reason is because the material in non reflective, so we won’t see any glare in our pictures. The secondary reason, the clothing will stick to the felt quite easily, so you can try out some neat arrangements with your clothing.

Step #3 - Pick Your Room and Your Lighting

You should pick a room with lots of windows. We want as much natural light pouring in as possible. The room I am using today has 5 large windows and it was a beautiful SUNNY day. So I had a lot of light in the room. I set up so that the product would be facing the windows. Start with a chair, and lean the piece of foam board against the back of the chair. I also used a piece of tape on the seat of the chair and the bottom of the foam board, so the foam board would stay put.

Next, we will drape the felt over the foam board. Today I am shooting kids clothing. If you need to shoot adult clothing, you may need something bigger than the foam board, and a couple more yards of felt.

Step #4 - Taking pictures!

So, it’s time to snap some pics. Position your clothing on the felt. Make sure that you iron the clothing if it has packaging creases from the manufacturer. We don’t want to see those fold marks. (Hey your iron is already out anyway… so you may as well keep going… and then you can come to my house and start on my… hehe) Try out some different arrangements. If you have several pairs of pants to sell, arrange some a different way to create a variety of pictures. When you are taking pictures, zoom right in on the item. This saves time when it comes to cropping.

Step #5 - Make Those Photos POP!

So now you have some decent photos! No half painted toenails in the corner of your picture… no carpet stains next to that shirt… and no clutter in the background. But, we are not done yet. Now we head on over to Picnik and punch up our pics a bit.. make them rock!

First, let’s brighten them up a hair.. use the Exposure tool. Don’t go overboard… we don’t want the color to get out of whack.

Next, let’s crop this picture. You won’t always need to crop, but in this case, I had a lot of extra whitespace.

OK.. almost done! Next, let’s add a border. This is not absolutely necessary.. however, if you are using white felt, I recommend it, simply b/c it will make the picture stand out a bit more… and as in this case, if the background is not pure white, it will be much less obvious. So head over to the Create tab and let’s add a border.

Lastly… let’s SAVE… yes, Picnik is amazing. They let you save your edited pictures on your hard drive. Woohoo!! So save away… and now you are ready to upload some kick butt product pics!

Next time, we’ll talk about taking model shots! Check back soon.

-Shanna

I recently designed her daughter Jordan’s site… another fun one.  Anyway.. check out Crib Rock’s amazing clothing and decor!  It ROCKS!

until next time…

-S

We opted to stay home this year.  We got some fireworks to light off ourselves, which were GREAT, but a little too close to take pictures of.  Our neighbors put on a nice show though… and since I was already set up with my tripod, I snapped a few shots.

Not too shabby for neighborhood fireworks.  We were pretty impressed.  This was my first year taking pictures of fireworks.  I am fairly happy with the results, but will need to play with my setting a bit before next year.

All in all it was a fun evening!  We had roasted pork shoulder.. and I even got a little domestic.. I made this cake from Pioneer Woman’s site (she got it from Barefoot Contessa’s cookbook.. but Pioneer Woman is a domestic goddess.. so she needs some credit here IMO):  Barefoot Contessa’s 4th of July Cake.  can you say YUM.  Anything with 7 sticks of butter and 3 blocks of cream cheese is ‘OK’ in my book!

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!  Take care, and check back this week for my Product Photos tips!

-Shanna