Makeshift Photo Studio!!

There have been several posts on Folksy forums recently on how people manage to take good clear photos (especially in gloomy weather conditions) this is something I`ve struggled with at times over winter, when there`s no sun the photos are dark & when the sun does come out they look washed out! I looked into pop-up photo tents but the price put me off a bit (not making enough selling cards at the moment) as did the storage problem (I know they fold flat but our house is bursting at the seams) so I tried to think of a way of utilising what we already had at home & came up with this solution which seems to be helping me .
My craft corner is in our bedroom next to a window which has a roller blind and (more importantly) a thin white (ok whitish) curtain.
The camera I use is a fairly basic point & shoot type which I`ve had for several years (Fujifilm Finepix 6.3 megapixels) it does have the ability to turn off the flash & a macro ability (which I only recently discovered)

First clear desk chair of any excess papers etc. (please excuse the messy desk in the background!)

I leave the box on the chair as it makes for less crouching down when I take the photos (it`s the one I store my folksy shop in)

Next I cover the chair & box with an old tablecloth that I inherited from my Grandma (it doesn`t fit my dining table so if I don`t find a use for it Hubby might try to send it to the charity shop!) it`s white but has a subtle texture & pattern on it.

Next I add a plate stand to support the card (my dad bought me a load at a car boot to use on craft fair stalls to display my cards)

Then I add the card & take the photos without using the flash (I find this makes the photos look washed out & if there`s any gold/silver elements on the cards the light bounces off them.) I use the macro setting on my camera (the button with a flower on) to get clearer close-ups & take lots more photos than I need. The curtain acts as a light diffuser if the sun is too bright or I can use my desk lamp behind it if the weather is too gloomy (but I haven`t had to do this much as we get quite a lot of morning light in our bedroom)

Finally I up load them onto the laptop & go into the photo editing programme that came on the computer (windows photo gallery) and crop the photos & alter the brightness if I think they need it.
Then load them onto folksy, list them in my shop http://folksy.com/shops/DeesDesigns and (hopefully!) sell them :-)

I in no way claim to be an expert at good photography & there are many people on folksy who take better photos than mine  but I thought someone who`s new to all this might get a few tips to help their photos, after all that`s all our customers have to go on they can`t pick up our wonderful creations to inspect them.

Diane x