The One TAR posted a fantastic guest-hosted video on her channel about taking better pictures of board games. You should watch it!

I've been trying to pretend that I know how to take photos for a long time, but Scott makes numerous fantastic points about what makes a good photo.

To re-post, here's the photo I took with my cell phone when my Stormtroopers were first completed:

There are a legion of issues with the photo.

The lighting isn't good leading to poor white balance. I could have corrected the balance post-photo, but that seems like cheating for the point of this blog.
The focus of the picture, the Stormtroopers, is uninteresting. There's no context for them. My goal was to show how painting the miniatures, even poorly, improves their presence.
The background is busy, and not in a good way. The paint streaks on the paper towel add character to the scene, but the ones on the left lead you away from focus. Additionally, the window well and brushes on the right distract from the troopers.

The Emperor would not be pleased.

I decided to take 30 seconds to stage the shot and get better lighting, leading to this:

Sure, the shot still has issues, but it is a massive improvement!

The viewer gets a good idea of how dramatic the transformation from unpainted to painted is. It also gives context to the troopers being on the table and the improvement that makes. The same ideas were attempted in the first photo, but without the extra effort and thought it is a significantly worse picture.

A big thank you to Scott for taking the time to create the video for Tiffany. It's short, yet delivers great insight into taking better photos.