The Clearout

To raise some funds to buy even more clothes, I've decided to sell the old, outgrown and out of fashion things I have on FleaBay. Mum said it was OK so long as I ask before I put anything up for auction, so I began sorting through my clothes, deciding what I wanted to keep and what I might sell. Mum wouldn't let me sell a few items that I really wanted to get rid of, but for the most part, she was happy. Now the work begins. Not only do I have to photograph every item, I have to create the listings and write the descriptions, and getting this right will determine if something sells or not. I'd done a lot of reading about successful FleaBay selling and according to the interweb, clothes sell better if they're photographed being worn rather than on a hanger or laid flat. The more images the better, so front, side, back, close-up details and the label should be included. I modelled the first batch and Mum took the photographs... but they were all a bit crappy. If they weren't blurred they were wonky, which means I’d have to spend ages straightening and cropping the images on my laptop. Mum blamed the camera and I blamed her, before asking my brother to help. His photos looked OK on the small camera screen, but “Oh Peter you're as bad as Mum.” I whined as I looked at them on my large laptop screen. “Can't you hold the camera still for one millisecond?!”

“I was.” he claimed, before blaming the camera.

I picked up the camera, told him to stand where I'd been standing and took a couple of pictures of him. Then I viewed them on the large laptop screen and showed him the difference between my 'steady' photographs and his shaky ones. We started again and whilst some of his pictures were perfectly sharp, too many weren't. “This is going to take forever.” I sighed.

“Sorry, sis... I'm trying my best.” Peter claimed. “Why don't you put the camera on your dresser and use the timer?”

“Because that'd take forever... I'd be waiting 30 seconds for each picture.”

“Yeah, true.” he sighed. “Well... I wish I could help but, if I can't take a decent photograph there's not much I can do.” He began to make his exit.