in which it turns out the answer is None Of The Above

[ Two brown glass spray bottles are flanked by two squat jars of salve. They sit in mottled sunlight, with sparse desert plant life in the background. ]

Y’all know how I get product pictures — find a good flat spot with something green behind it, & have at.

… I live in the desert.

So it’s been what you might call ‘interesting’ & I call ‘kinda frustrating tbh’. Between the lack of greenery & the EXTREMELY bright sunlight, finding the right time & place for product pictures has been … intermittent.

I did find a bit of a solution, though, no thanks to Loiosh …

[ Most of the shot is taken up by Loiosh’s front legs and belly, which are mostly blurry though his paws are sort of in focus. Directly in front of one forepaw is a small tumbleweed-lookin chunk of bush, and just visible at the right side of the pic is part of a salve jar. ]

… who was VERY HALPFUL, but at least he’s pointing out the bit of bush I cut off & used to make that mottled shade on the jars & bottles.

[ The camera has panned to the right; only one of Loiosh’s forepaws is visible at the left, but all the jars and bottles sit to the right. ]

I’d still rather have had a nice bit of haze over the sun, but usually the way we get that here is called a dust storm, & you know, I don’t LIKE those.

Inspired by this, though, I set about doing something similar for the jewelry I’ve been posting. Not wanting to uproot an entire bush to suspend sunwards of the hunk of steel I’ve been using as a photo background, I instead found something else.

[ It’s green plastic mesh, the kind the big bags of corn or onions or potatoes tend to come in. It’s hung over a hunk of wood, loosely tied on with what used to be the drawstring channel at the top. ]

It made NICE mottled shade, much finer than the poor bush, & at the perfect time of day to get that golden hour hue.

[ To the left, the mesh, hung over a narrow board that’s been stuck between two straw bales so it sticks out between the sun and a sheet of metal that’s leaning against the straw bales. ]

Still had a problem, though. Nothing really wanted to focus. It’s been an ongoing thing with this camera — it often insists on focusing on the background, even when I tap directly on the thing I WANT it to focus on, but this was worse; NOTHING was focused. Eventually I got really cranky & tried something else that’s worked for me before, taking pictures at my desk, using my desk lamp for light. Worked for Jewelry January last year, surely it would work again.

I did want something other than the very dark brown wood of my desktop as the background, though, & something vertical, so I dug up the pallet wood book stand I made a couple-three years back, & stuck some earrings in a convenient crack.

[ A pair of earrings, each bearing a piece of white creek glass, hangs from a crack about halfway up a rough wooden book stand. ]

Now that’s good lighting, a nice background, easy enough to make a hook to sit at the top, everything’s looking fine, except for the BUGGERING PICTURES ARE ALL STILL BLURRY —

— & that’s when I wiped off the camera lens with my t-shirt.

(It’s a cheapass phone camera, chill.)

(also hush, I’ve been really tired lately.)