Blurry Thinking

This is another "Don't just write about your successes" post. Maybe it will help someone caught in the same blurry situation.

I'd had problems with my product photos for about a week - no matter what I did, every single one was blurry. It seemed to have happened suddenly right after I changed my batteries, so I even posted in the "Materials and Techniques" forum at Etsy asking if the batteries could have anything to do with the blurriness. I got lots of other photo-taking tips, but no one could see how it could have anything to do with the batteries. So, like any other logical thinker, I tried to remember what else I'd changed recently. I'd just gone from using fabric backgrounds to using paper - but when I reverted to cloth the pictures were just as blurry.

I was at a loss until I was puzzling over some of the enlarged photos on my computer screen and realized they looked the same way the world looks when my glasses need cleaning. Of all the silly solutions - my camera lens was dirty! I'm not a pro at cleaning camera lenses, and I did so pretty gingerly. There's a spot on the right-hand side of all my photos that's still blurry because I didn't want to damage the lens by cleaning too vigorously.

Of course, I should go back and retake all the blurry photos and I might do that... sometime. In the meantime, here's a "before and after" look at a rosary that got caught in the middle. It's a more conventional rosary than most of mine - just teal-colored glass "Hail Mary" beads and some coordinating glass "Our Father" beads. It's also a Franciscan Crown:

Before

After (you can even see the texture of the background better)

And here's a blurry (and sideways) view of the entire rosary:

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Don't forget the Christmas in July Sale on Etsy. In my shop, there's a group of rosaries - both five-decade and Franciscan Crowns - on sale for $10.00 each.