I thought I’d share my recent efforts to bring my felt bags to life by photographing them in the locations which inspired them, in this case Dartmoor National Park in Devon.
You might wonder whether it’s worth going to so much trouble. Well, over the last couple of months I’ve been putting in a real effort to resurrect my long-defunct Etsy shop. I’ve listened to endless webinars on YouTube about SEO (search engine optimization – who knew how critical this is to appearing at the top of search results?!?) and how to write product titles/tags etc. Taking great photos of your products is also really important, to give potential customers a real feel for what they’re buying, as it’s obviously much harder to appreciate this online.
I’ve recently created a collection of bags inspired by Dartmoor. These have been a bit of a departure for me in that they are sewn together from my hand-made felt fabric, rather than created as a seamless bag (which has meant getting to grips with zips, but that’s another story!). I photographed them as usual indoors against a white background, but as I’m not a professional photographer I really felt that they could be improved. So, credit to my husband for suggesting we take them out to Dartmoor and photograph them in situ. So last weekend that’s what we did. We went up to Haytor (aka Haytor Rocks), on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. Aside from it being a bit chilly, we had a great time photographing the bags, and then afterwards were surprised to discover lots of Dartmoor ponies around the other side of the rocks. Ultimately I was really pleased at how the bags reflected the landscape, so much so that it’s given me lots of ideas for other colourways and designs (but again, that’s another story for the future).
Here are some of the results, which I’ve this week added to my Etsy listings, and of course now we need to take some of my coast-inspired bags down to the beach for their close-ups!
