About my yarn pictures

I met with Beth yesterday. She designs both knitted and crocheted items, which you can find on her etsy shop.

It was quite interesting when I showed her my yarns that I'd brought. She had really liked the pictures of Swampwater I'd posted in my Facebook group, but she said they looked very different from what she was expecting. The photos of yarn that I'd posted in etsy didn't surprise her the same way, and that got me to thinking.

If you're a fan of Fiber Charmer on Facebook, you get to see raw, unedited photos. I take the yarns outside and photograph them on a stone bench that I've got. The cats all love that bench, so usually there are cat pictures with the yarn pictures. Lily, Grey and Hopalong (the stray) all love to get up there and see what I'm doing. I call them my quality control inspectors. I also use one of our point and shoot cameras to take those pictures.

The pictures on etsy are taken inside the house in a makeshift studio on a card table with a borrowed camera. In fact, the tan background is a padded fleece blanket that worked better than the white flannel I'd purchased especially for background fabric.

We worked pretty hard on getting the etsy photos to look like the yarns, but even all that work can't take into account monitor differences. Think about what the yarn pictures go through. The camera translates them into a digital image, which may or may not look differently once I upload it into the computer. I then edit the photos, although I didn't adjust any colors with the batch that went onto etsy last weekend. I just cropped and scaled them. The digital images then travel across glass or metal wires, or perhaps they just bounce off a satelite to end up in front of you. Your computer monitor probably shows the colors a little differently from how mine does, and we won't talk about how the colors look on your smartphone.

I do my best to portray colors faithfully, and I'll admit to buying yarn off the internet only to be really surprised when I received it. It happens. What do I do when that happens? This is me, but I toss them into my stash. Eventually, if it doesn't grow on me, I'll turn around and resell it. I've destashed both on Ravelry and ebay, but I honestly think I've only decided to sell 2 or 3 yarns that way. Interestingly enough, they were commercial yarns, although Sheri at The Loopy Ewe loves blue, and I have considered selling a couple of yarns that came in kits, but then again, I've got a husband to knit for too.

I hope this helps you when you're looking at a yarn and wondering about why it looks so differently on etsy. You're always welcome to send me a convo on etsy. I do check the shop at least twice a day.