What are your tips & tricks for photographing your cards?

Mine are usually pretty horrible, too. One thing I've heard about why people like Jennifer McGuire use so many top-fold cards is because they photograph better. A quick glance at my photos of my C&C cards seems to support this. At the Cardmaker's Success Summit or whatever it was called a few weeks ago Ardyth described her little card-photograply stand or easel or something. But I clearly don't remember all that much about it

I’m trying to get better photos too. Don’t really have B any tips because I am still working on it, but I did want to say is that I bought WRMK design background poster boards and glued those down to foam board I got at Dollar Tree. I got them at Joann near where the regular poster boards is. I got 2-3 different wood grains. Sometimes I use them as my backgrounds.

I have the hardest time with lighting, exposure, and white balance! And being lazy lol.
My window is very close to the house next door which is royal blue so that creates a color cast on my photos. Not as bad as when the neighbors stored a neon green kayak outside the window but pretty bad. Being able to see the color of the light that you're working with might help - or maybe the issue if just getting more light.

If you do a flat lay you can use a tiny curl of washi tape to keep the card closed and then use a couple of erasers or an acrylic block to lift the card up from the desk/background to give a little separation and dimension to the card you want to focus on (I sometimes take photos of sets but want to highlight one card at a time).

examples from Mona Toth (pro photog and cardmaker) here, but a phone camera will work too.

http://instagram.com/p/CpDn3Gxg2vy

http://instagram.com/p/CqTb1QPgFLS

I use a WRMK Shot box. I bought it on a whim but have really liked it for taking photos of my projects. You can buy different backgrounds and the lighting is great. It keeps my photos the same light and distance.

It seems like it’s possible to have taking photos of your cards become a whole nother hobby — I’d like to land short of there, but somewhat better than my current photos.

When I started my shop I didn't realize that product photography is NOT my jam. Turns out I'm not very good at it, I don't enjoy it, but it's essential to get it right for cards you sell. ugh. I struggle with showing colors accurately and making sure the angles are right (some of my photos make it look like I'm drunk or the card is tipping over) and then I upload the photos to my shop and everything looks drab and sad, but I don't want to overexpose too much and lose the accuracy of the colors... The photography is one of the things that's made me move away from selling to donating. I love photography as a hobby/artistic thing but product photography is making me hate it. 

I set up on my desk near my ott light. I grab a light pattern 12x12 paper for a backdrop. I use a few stacked ink pads as a base covered w a pc of white cardstock. Viola.

What seems to work best for me is to put my card on a solid color background that is a contrast to my finished card. I make sure my card is placed with the light source coming from the top edge of the card and coming toward me, so that my camera or phone can be positioned directly above without casting a shadow. I use my phone camera most of the time and still get decent photos, but some phone cameras are better than others.

Note: I have a very high quality DSLR camera, but was shocked and frustrated when I realized that my son got better quality photos with his Samsung phone than I got with my expensive camera. As a result, I eventually got a newer version of his Samsung phone. I use the camera feature on my phone more than I use my pricey camera. I have a Samsung Galaxy 9 phone.  Using a phone camera is easier to position it above my project than my much heavier DSLR.

I also position my phone/camera high enough that I can avoid the shadow but zoom in close. I hope those instructions make sense.

I bring my image into Photoshop Elements. I use the skew crop and set the crop measurements to the size of my card, and a resolution of at least 300 dpi. I set the 4 corners to the corners of the card, and crop it. That allows me to get a straight, front view that looks perfectly placed, and eliminates unnecessary background. I save the file.

Once I am happy with the cropped image, then I adjust the resolution down to 72 dpi, change the name slightly, or add a number, and save it as a different file. That is the one I will post to the internet, but if I need a higher resolution for tweaking later, I still have the larger resolution image.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one! I too have missed entire seasons because I just couldn't bring myself to set up and take decent photos. (And then the universe conspired to send me another job that also requires taking product photos - selling antiques and collectibles online for my FIL. Half of my life is product photography now. ugh. No wonder I've lost my love of taking pictures for fun.)