And how we ended up taking our product photos in a very unusual spot!
The Scandiwegians live in a beautiful 150 year old cottage and we absolutely love it.
But it had some big disadvantages - it was very small, rather dark, ridiculously draughty and, most inconvenient of all, the staircase was so narrow and winding that we couldn't get furniture upstairs! To get furniture in or out of the upstairs rooms we had to remove the windows including the frames and hoist things through the first floor windows, which wasn't exactly practical.
So we saved and saved and saved and when the time came we moved out so it could be gutted and a 2 storey extension built. And that's great, and extremely exciting, but we've moved in to a basement flat which presents issues when we're taking photos of our stock for listing.
It wasn't too bad during the summer, we waited until the afternoon sun hit the west facing bay window to hold the photography sessions. But now that it's October and there's less sun, and it's lower so disappears behind all the town houses on the other side of the road, we're really struggling. And that's when there is sun, last week there were about seven rainy days in a row!
It seems so ironic, considering that we sell lighting, to not have sufficient light, but it's a fact. Our photo area has over 10 lamps with daylight light bulbs in facing it but still the photos are dark and, it's so important that we correctly portray the colours of our items, that we're scared to adjust them too much.
We found a rather unusual spot. In retrospect, looking at the photos, it wasn't the best as the sun wasn't directly on the products, but it was an awful lot better than the gloomy shots we'd been taking inside, and the diffused light was rather atmospheric.
So the unusual spot? On top of the gas meters!
We bet you wouldn't have ever guessed that.
But needs must when you're a cellar dweller in Northern Europe in winter.
