Update on yoga mat tote, and thoughts on my shop

I finished the mat tote I started yesterday, took photos, and listed it on Etsy.

It was not easy to take good pics of the tote, as it’s so long and the purple floral print doesn’t always photograph well (as I found out while trying to get shots of my first reversible tote). I think I took something like 60-80 photos just to get the 5 I posted on the listing. I’m happy with almost all the end photos I put on Etsy, but taking pics definitely is one of the more time-consuming aspects of having the shop. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Natural lighting (and lighting in general) is non-compromisable. An otherwise decently composed photo will come out crummy in subpar lighting, and photo-editing software can’t fix it. At least not the kind I have. This means that every day I only have a brief time window in which to do photos, and if it’s cloudy or raining, that makes the window even narrower (or nonexistent).
• Backdrops are important. I have been experimenting with fabrics and colors in my backdrops. I have a big piece of black felt that I use for solid black backdrops, and several dark-colored saris that I’ve used behind eye pillows for a more drapey, soft background. We have at least six different wall colors in our house, though not all of these are in areas that get good natural lighting. And of course furniture, the ironing board, and my cutting mat are all different colors. Jackie looked at my shop and commented that the multicolored backdrops make the different items stand out from each other better. I think she’s right.
• It’s fun to get creative with props, both visible and nearly-invisible. For my reversible totes, I stuck a clear plastic pushpin in the wall and hung the totes on those. For the yoga mat tote, I set out my own yoga props to lend flavor. I’d like to get more photos of things in use, too. I’m thinking of taking photos of myself and friends out and about carrying the reversible totes, but…
• Outdoor lighting is tricky. So far I haven’t found a way to make it work, and it’s harder to control backdrops outside, unless you can drive around to different locations. I wonder if our downstairs deck area would work when the creeping jasmine is in bloom…?
• It can be hard to find good angles from which to photograph oddly-shaped items like drawstring bags and eye pillows. People don’t always know what these things look like — whereas I think most people are familiar with tote bags — so it’s on me to get pics of them that don’t make them look weird and bunchy… or else weird and flat (a challenge with the eye pillows).

What this all amounts to is that every time I make a new type of item, I have to figure this out all over again. What props will I need/what angles will be best? What colors/fabrics would be suitable backdrops for this? Where should I take these photos; where will I get the best light and still be able to set up my props/backdrop? How can I convey both the appearance and use of the item, through these 5 photos? Then I take the photos, usually triple shots of each angle (in case my hands wobble — no tripod yet), and after that I have to upload them, choose the best, edit those (I use Picasa because it’s easy and fast), and then cull again until I have 5 shots that make the best visual statement I can make about the item. It takes a much longer time than “take some pictures for the shop” sounds!

I was thinking about all this last night, while we had our friends over and Caroline was explaining to Bright what she does for work — both in her previous job as a management consultant, and in her current position as a marketing person for Lonely Planet. She went into it in detail, and I was startled to realize that what she was describing was a lot of what I do every week now, but on a very very small scale. Now that I have my Satsumabug business, I do think about marketing, publicity, branding, networking, and all that kind of thing on a very regular basis. It’s not like I sit down with a notebook and make long brainstormy lists (actually I do, sometimes), but most of the time I’ll just be driving or in the shower or having lunch or something, and I’ll just get an idea — “what if I had an email newsletter?” “what if I included a little gift with each purchase?” “how can I draw in more people to the shop?” — and it goes from there. There is so much that I do for this shop that I wouldn’t be doing if it were someone’s else shop and I were just the creative director or something. And now that I’m writing this post, I realize photography is another one of those things… along with designing my web presence, my logos and all other materials like packaging and care tags, and researching anything I could possibly need to know. As the sole proprietor and sole anything of my shop, whatever needs to be done, I do it, and that means I get thrown into a whole lot of tasks I would abhor if someone else were paying me to do it — marketing, for example — but since it’s for me, I actually enjoy it. I find it all very interesting.

But this also means that my shop takes up a great deal of my time even when I’m not actively crafting. And every minute that goes to managing the business is time that I can’t spend sewing, decoupaging, drawing, writing, exercising, cooking, or reading. So this is still the challenge.