Details
The architect Mies van der Hohe once said, "God is in the details." This often misquoted statement means that details can make the difference between mediocre and good work, or between good and excellent. I agree.
Elizabethan upper-class clothing was made to one of the most sumptuous design tastes in the history of costume -- the materials were rich and widely varied, the designs extravagant, and the ornamentation lavish. This is the very reason it's so popular among costumers -- it's a chance to cast off the blue jeans and sweatshirts of modern clothing, and go right over the top in an all-out, full throttle blitz of gaudiness.
If you've made a stunning Elizabethan costume, there's a good chance you've put a lot of attention into the details. Blackwork on the linens. Jewels on the forepart. Pearls on the bodice. Fur trimming a gentleman's cloak. Handmade shoes. Reproduction jewelry. Elaborate pomanders, fans, or other props.
That's great. So let us see these wonders -- get some detail shots!
Some things, such as blackwork or jewelry, might deserve very close photos, the kind photographers call macrophotography. This takes a lens capable of focusing very closely, and not all lenses can do it.
Fortunately, lenses capable of macro focusing are much more common than they used to be. Many zoom lenses for 35mm cameras can do it, and nearly all zoom lenses on digital cameras.
If you don't have a macro or close focusing lens, don't give up yet. Many photo shops will be happy to sell you closeup filters, which are simple supplementary lenses that screw onto your lens using the filter threads. They are available in different diopters (levels of magnification), and the different ones can be combined to even stronger magnification. You don't even need to tell the camera guy what kind of camera you have -- all you need is the filter diameter of the lens (e.g., most lenses for Nikon are 52mm; most for Olympus are 49mm). The optical quality will be diminished a little, but certainly not enough that the difference will be visible when the pictures get to the web.
If all you have is a 35mm camera with a normal or wide-angle lens, there's still a way to do it. For a very reasonable price (I remember them at about $8-12, but that was a long time ago), you can buy a reversing ring. This device screws onto the threads for mounting filters on the end of the lens -- but it also has a bayonet mount for attaching to the camera body. The result is that the lens is mounted backwards on the camera, and its zone of focus is VERY close.
If you don't have a reversing ring, and the guy at your local camera shop never heard of one, there's another way to do it: take the lens off the camera and simply HOLD it backwards, tightly against the lens mount. It can work -- I've done it.
Unless the diaphragm is set fully open (which won't give much depth of field, remember?), the picture will appear dark, sometimes VERY dark. In addition, normally a linkage in the lens, either mechanical or electronic, tells the camera what the aperture setting is. With the lens reversed that can't work. These two factors will almost certainly mess up your auto-exposure system, so you will probably need to expose the picture manually.
If that sounds like too much chance of error, you can simply focus the lens as close as it can get, set the aperture to its smallest setting, go a little closer (trusting your increased depth of field), and snap your picture. When you get the print back, scan the desired section at high resolution, and the odds are pretty good that the inherent quality of modern 35mm film will give you good detail.
In either case, remember two things:
Finally, if your closeup pictures don't turn out well, don't panic. It's far easier to photograph a detail later, perhaps when the costume isn't being worn, than it is to try to set up a photo shoot identical to the first one.