If you haven’t already discovered the blog A Beautiful Mess, you should check it out now. It’s written by 2 sisters and has posts on crafts, fashion, interior design and recipes. And it looks great – it’s part of the reason I’ve been trying to improve the look of my blog, all-be-it very slowly!

The other thing about A Beautiful Mess, is they love photography and have written a book of tips for taking good photographs: A Beautiful Mess Photo Idea Book. It’s already out in American but doesn’t come out until November in the UK, so I ordered a copy of it from American because I didn’t want to wait!

As you could hopefully tell from the photos in my previous post, on my first Grainline Studio Scout Tee, I’ve been trying out some of their tips. Some of them are so simple, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of them before! I’ve been trying to find good places to take the photos of the clothes I make, and I had never thought of sticking some fabric to the wall to make the backdrop more interesting! I’m still going to try to hunt around my neighbourhood for good walls/ fences/ doors but for now, and while it’s too cold to go outside anyway, I can take pictures indoors that don’t all have to have a boring white wall behind them!

I also think I’ll give the paper backdrop a try when photographing food.

I really like this blackboard paint backdrop idea, it looks really good – especially with these particular cakes!

I also tried some of their tips on photographing a collection. I spent ages trying to take a good picture of some of my wool, but I think it’s quite difficult to photograph wool! Maybe I need more practice….

There are loads more technical tips (like focusing on something unexpected or how to use filters and lighting) and artistic tips (like how to style people and use colours) and a section in the back about what to use your printed photos for. I’m going to carry on practicing and hopefully my pictures will improve! You can check out the blog for loads more photography tips too.