The Pin That Wasn't Meant To Be

A few days ago, I got an itch to make a cute Halloween banner for the spookification of our house (last year, I was a total Halloween Scrooge and this year things are going to be different, by golly).

As luck would have it, this banner turned out *super* cute...so cute, in fact, that I thought I'd turn it into a pin-able blog post with a tutorial and everything.

See?  It's cute.  

But here's the thing about Pinterest: if you're gonna pin it, you need amazing pictures.

And O-M-G it was difficult to photograph this thing!

I've seen tons of cute banners on Etsy and Pinterest and knew exactly how I'd photograph my own. So, I hung my banner up between two bookshelves, above our "spooky" Halloween decorations, which are currently on a shelf between the bookshelves.  I go to take my first picture and...suprise...it won't all fit in the frame of my camera.  I back up as far as I can go, try a few different angles, move the dining room table...still no dice.  So, I find another lens that will capture the whole image and start snapping away.  Turns out, the light was really, really bright...glaring, even.  The pictures were practically glowing, and the letters were shiny (thanks to the glossy black paint I'd chosen, no doubt).

No problem, I think...I'll just find somewhere else.  And so, I moved the banner and assorted decorations to our mantle (which, as you may have guessed, required me to clean everything off of the mantle first).  Well, those pictures all came out kind of yellowish, and due to the lack of light, many were blurry (I'm sure there are technical terms to describe all of this, but let's just say my photography vocabulary is limited).  

:::SIGH:::

OK, it's alright, I think...I'll spread the banner out across the floor and climb up in a chair and take some pictures that way!

Umm, no.  The dark wood had a big bright spot (that crazy light, again), and...it just looked lame, to be honest.

Next, I tried hanging it from the kitchen counter, thinking maybe this would do the trick, but the end result was just cheesy and plain.

So, back to the bookshelves again (after moving all of the decorations back, first) for a few more tries at some different angles with the first lens again, and...nothing.

Photography FAILS.

One hour and 125 pictures later, and not one picture had turned out pin-worthy.  

With a little help from my laptop's built-in photo editing tools and a hand from Pic Monkey, I was able to make one of the pictures at least presentable enough for my blog (that would be the picture at the top of this post).  And it doesn't even look that good.  And I know it.

But gosh darn it, I spent a lot of time on that banner and those pictures and if nothing else, I am going to post it here.  

So, there will be no cute Halloween banner tutorial from me this year, but I haven't given up.

Next week, I'm painting pumpkins.  And those have *got* to be easier to photograph, right?

Have you taken a photography class before?  I think I need one.  Or twenty.