Good morning! Monday is a little bit of a crazy day here. (It’s our primary delivery day and it is typically a heavy shipping day.) So I thought I’d put together a different sort of post. I was asked recently during a webinar consultation for Cornell University’s extension office of St. Lawrence county about lighting for photographs and videos of agricultural products. Natural light is the way to go! These images are photos that I take for my wholesale buyer shop online. Florists are able to purchase flowers by variety, so it’s important for them to be able to compare flower types quickly. Our wholesale buyers are visual people, so they appreciate that our weekly availability is easy to understand in this way- a web shop with large photo icons (as opposed to a spreadsheet with links to photos or no photos at all). I use the same spot in our hall with soft light from a northern facing window. If it’s too late in the day or too early for that light I just wait until we have it. The flowers look so much better with natural light. I try to hold the product far enough from the wall so that there is no distracting shadow in the background. I use the same quantity of stems each time (3) for uniformity. Make sure the more interesting part of the handful is in focus. And snap. (I just use my phone’s camera for these.) In Instagram, I adjust the brightness, contrast, structure, saturation, and temperature to make sure the image looks as much like the flowers I’m holding in real life as possible. We never use filters or make adjustments that might misrepresent our products. The goal is simple, clean photography. One last tip: make sure your own phone’s brightness is always the same when you’re editing- so that you don't over adjust your photos! Hope some of those tips are helpful and now you know what we use these kinds of photos for when you see them sprinkled into my stories or here on the feed. They’re a message to florists: we have these beauties! Instagram only lets me share 10. So here are 10 recent faves. —————————————————— @ccecornell #flowerfarm #farmerflorist #flowerfarmer #flowerstagram #wholesaleflowers #tulips #adirondacks #coldclimategrowing #beauty #noisecash #natural #quates