4. Do Use a Background for Your Images Background is a loose term, here. Personally, I really like using solid-color backgrounds for my photography since it looks a bit more like a digital render (and I think it’s a nice contrast). You may like wood, you may enjoy brick or some sort of locale, but please don’t just throw your game somewhere and take a photo of it without putting some care into the background. It looks weird. Did Amazon sell me this game? Is the lint roller important? Nope; just messy.
6. Do Get Creative! Experiment!
5. Don’t Overdo It on the Editing You can really make a photo look good if you know how to do some small edits, especially around levels, shadows, and highlights. You can also aggressively wash out a photo, make it look too dark, or add a bunch of effects that are going to be distracting. Simple spreads of the games that highlight the pieces and the art are great; edits that try to compensate for a mistake in the original shot are okay; an editing job that makes the photo just ... look bad is probably not what you want to go for.
You should be trying a bunch of different things. Experiment with layouts, grids, shapes, angles, lights, stacking, balancing, whatever you think does a good job of expressing what your game’s attitude is. Worst case scenario, you set up a shot, take a photo, do some editing, and you don’t like it. Even if that happens, you gained valuable experience that might help you the next time you want to do something similar. It’s all about the process.
One More... 7. Don’t Steal Photos This is occasionally a problem for me and a variety of other people, especially people who post to BoardGameGeek (BGG). If you’re using board game photos, especially for commercial purposes, and you take them from BGG without asking, you’re almost certainly violating BGG’s Terms of Use and the license for those photos. It’s a pretty crappy thing to do. If you’re not sure if you can use it, ask, and if the person asks for compensation, pay the artist. Exposure isn’t compensation. A lot of photographers are happy to negotiate rates, but you have to ask first.
Good luck, and happy shooting! fall 2019 • AROUND THE table 21
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