# First photos



## mmcavoy (Oct 7, 2006)

This is my first serious attempt at imaging my pens.
I would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks
Mike


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## gerryr (Oct 7, 2006)

The first thing is that almost everyone hates thumbnails, but that's not a photo problem.  The background is distracting and there's too much of it.  What we all want to see is just the pen or pencil as the case may be, so you should crop the photo much tighter.  The prop for the pen is OK, but the leaves don't add anything.  The white balance and lighting both look very good.  The focus seems a hair off, but maybe it's my monitor or the CA fumes.  Did you have the camera set for macro and were you within the specified range?  If you didn't use a macro setting or your camera doesn't have one, then you need to move a bit further away.  All that said, it's a very good first attempt.  Pens are not easy things to photograph.


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## mmcavoy (Oct 8, 2006)

Thank you for the great feedback...
I will take your advise and try some new shots.

Thanks much
Mike


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## mmcavoy (Oct 8, 2006)

Gerry,

Once again thank you.  This is my second try.  I think I was able to accomplish what you suggested.  What do you think?
Mike


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## wdcav1952 (Oct 8, 2006)

I don't know how Gerry feels, but I like it!  Very nice work.


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## mrcook4570 (Oct 8, 2006)

I'm not crazy about the color of the background, but the photo is excellent.


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## mmcavoy (Oct 8, 2006)

William,

Thanks for feedback. I didn't want to get consumed with trying to photograph the pens. I still am working on getting my fit and finish right...
Thanks again,
Mike


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## ctEaglesc (Oct 8, 2006)

That second picture sure looks good on my monitor.
It may need a little sharpening( it depends on what your camera determines is a close up if that is the mode you took it in.)
Of course it might be I need to put my glasses on.[^]


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## gerryr (Oct 9, 2006)

Glasses won't help Eagle, it looks a hair fuzzy on my monitor too.  But, it is MUCH better than the first picture.  I use Picasa for editing, it's free from Google and has a lot of very good features.  One of those features is "Sharpen" and I use it on every photo I post.  The newest version is a lot better than the previous version.


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## EPC (Oct 13, 2006)

Second photo is much better. Like others already said, you don't want the background to be busy. You want your pen to stand out. I would also suggest using a different background color so that your pen "pops".


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## mmcavoy (Oct 14, 2006)

Another attempt.
If I try to sharpen any further it begins to get the Jaggies.




<br />

Thanks for looking and all the feedback.
Mike


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## TellicoTurning (Oct 21, 2006)

Mike,
Another chime here... as Gerryr said, don't care for the thumbnail.. the picture itself is pretty artsy... but if you are showing pens, second and third pictures are better.  Second picture shows up on my monitor as nice and sharp, but background does detract from the pen itself... last picture is much better of all of them... just be careful when you use the sharpen features... they can go too much over and distort in the other direction.  Picasa is a good program, don't use it myself.  I have it on my system, but prefer Microsoft Digital Imagine Pro 9. 

Keep your background as neutral as possible to best show off your pictures.


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## sptfr43 (Oct 21, 2006)

your last pic is nice. great job on the pen too


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## airrat (Oct 22, 2006)

Mike, your 3rd picture is the best.  Very crips and clear.  Background is better then the orange.  Very sharp looking pen.  The props you are using are good too.   GratZ


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## Daniel (Oct 22, 2006)

Mike, to give you anouther line of feedback.
first of all there are at least two types of photos for pens.
there is what I call the glamour shot, and then what I call the mug shot. the mug shot shows the pen up close and in detail without a lot of creativity involved. but it does require having exposure lighting and polishing of your pen down very well. you have those down pretty well with your second and third photo.
your first one falls in the area of the glamour shot for me. and is actually very good for a lot of reasons. possibly without knowing it your hit on a lot of rules about composition which is a subject that does not discussed around here. it seems most people have decided that he only good picture of a pen is the mug shot type. I don't agree and think that they actually get very boring.
I could give you a list of reasons your glamour shot is good but you would most likely have to do some homework before it would really mean anything. as an example you hit on the rule of thirds three times over on this pic. each pen has its clip end on a third junction and the two pens converge on  a third junction. one thing I do think might help the pens stand out a bit more as the subject would be to have the leaves just a tad out of focus. that is not ment to be said as something that would improve the photo only as a suggestion of other ideas you could try and get and then see what you think of it. if you have photo shop you could try and select the leaves with the magic wand and unsharpen them. that would give you an idea of what that effect has. Personally I like the first photo the best background and all. 
anyway I just took one look at your series of photos and thought you had moved completely from trying to get a good glamor shot to a good mug shot.


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## mmcavoy (Oct 23, 2006)

Daniel,
You bring up some interesting points.  I would like to pose a question.  Let's suppose there are two websites up selling pens, both sites feature a very similar pen for approximatley the same price and the quality is the same.  Using your analogy Glamour vs. mug shot.  I think the Glamour wins.  While I agree the pen must be sharp and close enough to see the detail I also think that a shot that shows some creativity could possibly give a competative edge. Maybe I'm way off base here and it truely is just show me the pen.

Mike


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## Daniel (Oct 23, 2006)

Mike,
 I think the glamour shot has it's place. they use it a lot for magazines etc. basicaly to get your attention onto pens in a general way. the mug shot is to show off a specific pen in detail. glamour shots would be used more as a header photo or as your web site front page photo etc. the close up's then fill all the for sale pages. they both take some practice to get right. the close up because exposure lighting etc is so critical. the other one because composition comes into play and that is a very long subject.
I agree that the glamour shot wins for me always. but I like looking at photos in  general as much as I like looking at pens. I also tend to think that a glamor shot would help sell a pen faster than a mug shot. I think the main reason you don't see that more often is that a glamour shot takes much longer to set up and.. you can still add some elements to a close up but it gets real tricky to not loose the details of the pen in doing so. then there is the real extreme close up that I don't see here. like a picture of just the nib or just the clip. not a cropping of the clip from a larger photo but a picture of the clip that was ment to be a picture of the clip. most of this is going beyond the interest of this group anyway as most of us do not desire to be really good photographers. we are penmakers that want to get a respectable picture of our work so we can show it off here.


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## Jim in Oakville (Oct 25, 2006)

I Like to use grey as my background. 

The only prop I might use is a pen case, I find that items included in a photograph that are not related to the pen are sometimes distracting to what you are trying to present.  

Keeping it simple makes the pen the star...

Just my thoughts, Hope that helps.

[]


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