• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Kelly Casanova Weaving Lessons

  • Hi! I’m Kelly!
    • Disclosure
  • Online Weaving School Class Index
    • Common account issues
    • Common technical issues
    • What do I get with a membership?
  • New to rigid heddle weaving? Start here!
    • Never heard of the rigid heddle loom?
    • How to weave neat edges on the rigid heddle loom
    • Rigid heddle weaving
    • Rigid Heddle Weaving Patterns
  • Patterns
  • Subscribe

photography

Photography for Weavers

by Kelly 8 Comments

You spend countless hours warping, weaving and finishing your unique hand woven pieces. It only seems right that you honour that process with some photos that show how beautiful your finished products really are.

Whether you want to take photos to share on social media, with friends and family or whether you sell your weaving online and want to present your pieces in their best possible light, it is well worth taking a bit of time to learn a few basic photographic principles that will help you level up with your photos.

*This post contains affiliate links. For further information, please see my disclosure policy.

The good news is that, these days you don’t need a super duper fancy camera to take good photos. I do use my DSLR camera when I want to take photographs for classes and my patterns, however for everyday use and social media, I always use my phone.

Phone cameras are now way more advanced than they used to be and can make your “photo to platform” experience really quick and seamless. Considering most of us possess a fairly modern phone, (though at nearly 5 years old, I’m not sure my phone could be considered modern any more!) it makes sense to be familiar with your phone camera and make the most of it.

I’ll start with what I consider 3 essentials to taking a good photograph:

Light

Clarity

Composition

We’ll begin with light. If you’re taking photos indoors, try to choose a sunny rather than dark or overcast day. Set up close to a window at a time of day where the sun is not shining directly onto the area you want to photograph. This will avoid too much shadow and the possibility of patches of light and dark.

I often use my studio lights for filming classes but rarely for photography. This is because natural light will always trump artificial, and give lovely tones to your photo without harshness of light and shadow.

Next is clarity. This is so important! No one wants to look at a blurry photo. Hold your phone or camera still or, if this is a challenge for you, use a tripod to unsure stillness. Also, if you have enough light, this greatly decreases the chances of your photo lacking sharpness.

Composition is something you can practice to improve on if it doesn’t come naturally. It’s basically about arranging and framing your “scene” so that it is visually pleasing and balanced. Try out lots of arrangements. Introduce some props to add interest and relevance to your photos eg. lemons with kitchen towels. Try folding, draping, scrunching your hand wovens. Have fun and don’t worry if some of your photos don’t look so great, that’s the point of experimenting – to find out what you like.

A word about editing.

Editing is a great photography tool and an excellent way to finish off and give that final polish to your photos. But it should never be relied upon to “fix” a photo. The aim is to get the best photo that can, in camera, so that when it comes to editing time you hardly have any work to do.

Photography for sellers.

If you are selling your hand woven pieces, good photography is really crucial. Remember that your potential customer can’t see and touch the items the way you can. You want to be able to bring them as close to “knowing” the piece as possible. Provide as many photos as you can from different angles. Include close ups with detail as well as distance shots.

Ensure you have an appropriate backdrop. Carpet and tiles are not a good look. If you think about it, if you were buying some beautiful hand woven towels, would you find them as appealing if they were photographed on a bare floor? I use professional vinyl photography backdrops for many of my photos. These are expensive, but well worth the investment if you are taking a lot of product photographs. I bought mine from Oz Backdrops and Props in Australia, but these backdrops are very similar.

If you are interested in learning more about photographing your hand wovens using your phone, check out my 49 minute Photography for Weavers Workshop. In this workshop, I take you through exactly how I set up product photos for my Diamond Stripe Towels and show you other arrangement possibilities to inspire you. I also take you into the free weaving software Canva, and show you how it can be used for basic editing.

Did you enjoy this post? Let me know in the comments below, I would love to hear from you!

Until next time…

Happy Weaving!

Filed Under: Free tutorial, Inspiration, Online Weaving School, Photography, Tutorials, Weaving Tagged With: photography, photography for weavers

Away

by Kelly 2 Comments


It’s been quiet here because we have been away. 



           A blissful beach holiday with no phones or internet.


            Days of walking and watching, fishing and resting.

So peaceful, just the beautiful sounds of wildlife and waves to listen to.


It was really hard coming home, particularly when we hit the city traffic. But I do feel rested and restored and ready to get back into daily life. 


Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: holidays, home education, photography

I Heart Faces “Pet” photo challenge

by Kelly 5 Comments

I wasn’t planning to enter the pet photo challenge on I Heart Faces. Our lovely ginger cat passed away this week after a brief illness and I haven’t really been in the mood for photos. But today THIS happened, my husband brought home this gorgeous little guy. I had no choice, I had to capture that cuteness!



And then, I couldn’t leave this little guy out! He’s rather taken with his new playmate.


Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: photography

Black and white photography

by Kelly 5 Comments

Black and white photography is, to me, the most captivating photography. 

Stripped back and pared down the image speaks volumes.

When I first learned photography at the age of 16, I developed my photos only in black and white.

Perhaps this explains my attachment and love for black and white. Watching images appear on the photo paper as I worked through the developing process was really quite magical.

I love colour too, but sometimes these days we are a little over saturated with it and can’t appreciate the message or feel of an image because it screams at our senses.

A black and white image is quiet, unobtrusive and gentle.

It invites the eye to take it’s time, to drink in the image and all it contains.


The classic timelessness of a black and white will never cease to appeal to me. 

I haven’t been picking up the camera a great deal lately, the cold weather begs me to stay indoors at the loom or the wheel (and fibre is so warm!) But I have been going over some older images and re-editing in black and white. I’m really enjoying the process and seeing the images from a completely different aspect.

How about you? Do you like black and white too? What do you like (or not like so much) about it? 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: photography

Fickle

by Kelly 6 Comments

I’ve definitely caught the weaving bug now that the weather is cool and often rainy. The loom is very well dressed these days! 
Sometimes I lament that I seem unable creatively to stick to one thing for long – as the title of this post suggests, I am very fickle! I become obsessed with doing something (weaving right now) for a length of time, and then it’s on to the next thing. 

This can have benefits – I do come back to things, they don’t get abandoned entirely, unless I really don’t enjoy it. I’m fairly multi skilled and most, if not all of those skills can be used together. However, I often think it would be really wonderful if I could keep the focus on just one or two things and really build that skill to a high level. It seems that the need for change and newness are just part of my restless nature.

I’m still taking photos but the photography passion has subsided a little too. Sigh, such a pity. I’ll keep going regardless, I still have much to learn and many improvements to make.

The rain brings fresh inspiration and life to the garden. We have lots of plans for renewing the garden.

The mexican orange blossom is so pretty in a vase with it’s dark, lush leaves and dainty, sweet flowers.

Plenty of lemons on the tree, but no eggs from the chooks! I just find that when there are lemons around I always want some eggs as well.

The classic and dainty foxglove.

How about you? What’s happening in your part of the world? How are you finding the gradual change in seasons? What are you working on? I’d love to hear from you!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Gardening, photography, weaving

Woven poncho finished

by Kelly 6 Comments

So, the poncho is finished! The hand dyed combined with baby pink yarn worked perfectly.

The yarn is all 8ply, which gives a lovely, light, yet warm feel to the garment.

At this point my little model decided that Mum had really taken enough photographs already.

We escalated into silliness.

And you know you’re pretty much done when it gets to this point!

Anyway, I’m super happy with how the poncho came out, it was a big experiment for me as I made the design from scratch. Now the question is whether to make more for the Etsy shop, what do you think?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: hand dyed yarn, hand woven, photography, weaving

Break the rules photography

by Kelly 1 Comment

Photography is so much more artistic than I ever knew before. Once you have a reasonable amount of the technical knowledge, the rest is up to you. This is what I really love about photography – the artistic freedom coupled with technical skill. It’s so exciting and challenging!


What I wasn’t prepared for when delving into the art of photography is all the so called “rules” one must follow in order to achieve “good” photos. The rule of the thirds, posing rules, lighting rules. I have found something much more useful than rules. Experience. Passion. Experiments. 
Some will look at one of my landscapes and say “but you haven’t used the rule of thirds” or “your horizon line isn’t precise” and “it’s over/under exposed”. 

When I look at a photo I’m led by the feeling it gives me. Do I love the image? Was capturing the image a positive experience? Was it fun?
If I can say a definite YES to these questions, then my motto is:

Go ahead and break the rules!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: photography

This moment

by Kelly 2 Comments

Linking up with this moment on Soulemama šŸ™‚

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: photography, this moment

Simple photography backdrop

by Kelly 2 Comments

Our garden is a great location for photography portraits, but, having just arrived at Autumn, it’s a little dry and not looking it’s best. Being a natural light photographer, I wanted to head outside but I was also wanting something a little different for a portrait session with my littlest sweetie pie and her fluffy friend.
I grabbed my favourite bed sheet, pegged it on the clothes line and we were in business! If it’s a breezy day you will have the challenge of the sheet moving (which you can see in the right corner here) in which case you could possibly weight it down with something at the bottom. I kind of like the feeling that the blowing sheet gives to this photo though.


Next, your editing program can be used to achieve a variety of looks still using the same backdrop and different poses.


A plain sheet would also work well if you were looking for a plain backdrop with natural light, but I think the pretty floral one suits my little sweetie just fine, don’t you?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: photography, Tutorials

Everyday Life Photo Challenge

by Kelly 1 Comment

I’ve entered the I Heart Faces photo challenge for the first time. The theme is “Everyday Life”. Our every day life involves a lot of reading and this scene of a child lying on the floor, engrossed in a book is a very common one. If you’re interested in entering the challenge or just viewing all the wonderful entries, follow this link.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: photography

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Archives

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2025 Kelly Casanova Weaving Lessons on the Foodie Pro Theme