Shameless Plug for My Mom's New Business

Hey everyone!

Sorry my posts have been a little spotty lately...between colds and ear infections and work trips with my husband and getting ready for this new addition to our family (6 weeks!  woohoo!), I haven't had a lot of extra time on my hands for creating stuff for the house or blogging about it.

But I did want to take some time to give a little shout out for my mama.  Here's the background:  she retired from AT&T several years ago and then went to massage therapy school to establish her second career -- this time, one in which she's working for herself and out of the corporate world.  She's pretty good at it, too...at least, I love getting one of her massages ;)

Anyway, a few months ago, she was off to a regular client's house to give an in-home massage, but forgot to bring her massage lotions home with her.  So, being the resourceful woman that she is, she decided to use a combination of essential oils instead.

Long story short, this client has been dealing with frequent and very intense hot flashes for years.  But after my mom's massage, she didn't have any for a day and a half.  So the two of them got their heads together, and have now created a product which really does reduce the frequency and intensity of hot flashes.  She's been selling for about a month and already has some repeat customers.

Her company is called Kuul Ravi.

I did some product photography for her last week so that she had some clean pictures for her company's Facebook account and her (soon to be up) website.  These are what I wanted to share with you guys today.  I am totally not a professional photographer, don't have any real equipment beyond my basic SLR and edited these guys in a standard photo editing program which came with my computer -- no photoshop here.  So that's my disclaimer.  I would love to hear any advice you guys might have, because I will probably be taking more (she wanted some taken at the beach) and tweaking these a little further.

Here we go.  I took several outdoors, and I think these are my favorites.  I love the juxtaposition of the clean lines of the bottle with the rustic and organic backgrounds I used outside.  This first was taken on an old kitchen chair that we've left on our back patio and has become very weathered.

This next one was on a fence post.  Again, I just love the weathered look with the clean bottle.  What do you think?

These are on a tree stump.  I particularly like the angle that these were taken at.

Same place; different angle.

Still the same place, but this time I only photographed one bottle and changed the perspective slightly.  I kind of love the texture of the tree stump in this one.  I also think this is a great shot of the label because it's in focus and easy to read.

The next few were taken on my kitchen table.  I wanted to give some to my mom that were completely clean and all about the bottle instead of the bottle competing with other elements in the picture.  I tried a few with an extra bottle in the background, but...

...thought that looked a little too busy.  Then I took out the background bottles, and...

...oops.  Left the flash on.  This pic is my least favorite.  Because the flash is one, the colors are muted and the label is difficult to read.  Everything looks kind of boring and unalive (is that a word?).

This next pic is pretty nice, though.  But the top is cut off :(

Ahhh, here we go.  I love how this one turned out.

I would really appreciate any feedback you guys have!  Comments or advice -- thanks!

Also, if you'd like, I can totally hook you up with my mom -- her name is Shelley McLean and the company's email address is kuulravi@gmail.com .  If you are having hot flashes, it's really worth checking out.  I haven't gone through that yet, but from everything I hear, it's kind of miraculous.

Thanks for reading!
Sarah