View my outline in my previous article here.

The most important part of a photograph is the lighting. With good lighting you can make a bad card look good, or with bad lighting you could make a good card look bad.

One of thing to avoid in photographing if you can, is using the flash. The flash will add a dark edge around your photo which does not look natural and can make a bad impression.

How I do it.

I have applied three-point lighting to my cards to achieve the look of the cards on the cover of the Stampin' Success magazine.

I have found that by putting one hard light - 500 Watts of undiffused light - on the background I can blow it out into a blur when I lighten up the levels when I edit the photo.

I use a medium light - 500 Watts of diffused light - from one side of the card to create the main shadow. Then I use a soft light - 250 Watts of diffused light - to fill in the dark spots on the card.

The finished photo has three shadows, yet they are not competing for dominance.

How you can do it.

I decided that I would try and see if I could get a nice picture of a card using and older digital camera and no lighting equipment.

I took the card from my last blog entry, and set it on our front porch steps with the sun lighting from behind, and some light being reflected off of our light colored siding, onto the front of the card.

Here are the results. When photographing this card, I put the camera directly in front of the card, making sure that the zoom was at its widest. The result is what is known as "barrel distortion". The card looks like you are looking down a barrel and the middle seems closer than the sides.

On this photo, I stepped back from the card and zoomed all the way in, resulting in no barrel distortion. The card is evenly sloped and very slightly tilted to the side. You don't want the card tilted too much or you can't see what is on the far side of the card.

One thing that you may also notice in the two photos, is the slight color difference and the different depths of field (blurring). With the camera being zoomed in, less light was allowed into the camera lens resulting in less focal range, creating the blurred background in the bottom picture. Also, with less light coming in the colors are more evenly balanced, creating a much more pleasing photo.

Some key notes to keep in mind when photographing:

• Avoid using your flash when possible
• Be sure to zoom part way
• Put the card at a slight angle

View my next article where I go into details of the editing process here.