Mais Oui Vintage

images source

Aren't these images from Mais Oui Vintage inspirational and just gorgeous?  I came upon this shop after reading Aya's blog over at Strawberry Koi and I literally gasped when I saw the first image.  Then, I clicked through their entire collection and at the end, I wanted to see more. 

I'm not sure what happened to this shop and if it's still running because when I click on their "shop" link, it turns up an empty Etsy page.  I wish i could just borrow these models. These images truly capture my little tag line for Revolving Styles- "Where Vintage Meets the Present."  When I think of the modern vintage women now, I will go back to this collection.  Also, I'm especially going to try to emulate these outfits, especially the 1st and the 4th picture.

Sigh.

I Like Where I'm Going

Recently, I decided I had had enough of my poor lighting and 5 year old camera.  I kept pushing off investing in these two items thinking that they would not make much of a difference in my product photos.  But, after I purchased my lighting and saw the results, I squealed!  Yet, my pictures started becoming overexposed 1 week after and I decided that I needed to just suck it up and purchase a new camera, also. 

I was thankful for a pretty good month in sales in January so I went for it and I squealed even louder and played with my new camera and lighting until 3 a.m. in the morning, even though I have a toddler that wakes up at 7:30 and I'm 27 weeks pregnant. 

Anyhow, sorry for the long introduction, but I chuckle when I see my old attempts at photos on Etsy and where I am now.  Hopefully, I can get a real model someday, but with my future of having 2 little ones running around very soon, I'm not sure how I'm going to pull it off.  Enjoy and laugh and smirk!

I started off with editing photos like crazy against a white background,

but the colors of the items would change and I got made fun of for photographing

one shoe. I didn't think it was that bad. geez.

I tried live modeling, but I felt silly and the pictures showed my rug.

My first attempt at lighting- 2 lamps. Oops.

Outdoors shots, which wasn't too bad, but not safe with a baby in tow.

 

I decided on a gray background to show off my whites and creams more,

so I used cloth.  After about hundreds of staple gunning to my poor

apartment wall, I still had issues, but at least my pictures had less

shadows and clearer color.

 

Then, I decided I didn't like dark gray as a background and had a brief phase

of this beige color with a weird white strip. Like I said, it was brief!

I found an awesome vintage trunk for all my accessory shots,

but for me, the color still wasn't right.

I moved to a house and had a whole wall to myself in my bedroom!

I had our bedroom painted a nice gray, but still had bright spots.

To eliminate the shadows and bright spots, I purchased a lighting set.

Loved it, until I realized how my camera couldn't handle the lights and started

overexposing my pictures.

Still not perfect, but so much better and I love how much more crisp my photos are.

I am happy for now and thanks for reading this long post!