Nah.. yer overthinking it. better yet, have someone else do the cat's cradle, and use bright colored yarn that will stand out for reference.

Don't worry about lighting, background, details or whatever. Just worry about camera angle, and the pose you want. You will be duplicating it anyway, so the rest would be tossed out anyway.

Take a buttload of pics from slightly different angles.. since yer using a digital camera, there's no excuse to not take 20 shots or more even!

Toss all the bad shots, and just keep the ones that have what you need in them.

Then use that for a reference.

Sometimes we tend to overthink things we want to do, when we can get by with a simple solution.

I mentioned Girl, because she has GREAT hand design, but any poser figure would do. if you can't even load girl though, I can't think of another figure with fewer polys that would look as nice. maybe V3 would do, or even V2?

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.