tinahdee

I’m back today with more tips on what works for me in product photography, specifically for jewelry. Sellers are always asking for advice about how to get more people to buy what they’re selling. Photos have to be one of the most important, if not THE most important details. You could have the best product on the Internet, but if your photos don’t reflect that, you probably are not going to be able to twist someone’s arm to buy your stuff.

Last time I talked about lighting. This time I want to share my thoughts about settings and background. In an effort to dress up their photos, sellers will place items on busy backgrounds like patterned paper, or surround the item with foliage or flowers. This rarely works well because in order to draw someone in to your shot and coerce them to click through, your product needs to be the most important thing in the picture. I heard someone say that your item needs to be the star. With small items like jewelry, that is especially true.

There should be no doubt in the shopper’s mind what you are selling. That doesn’t even mean that the entire piece needs to be inside the boundaries of the photo – sometimes it’s better if you leave a bit to the imagination. What is means is that there should be nothing else in that photograph that distracts your buyer from the item you are trying to sell. Nothing.

Simple is better. It’s good sometimes if your background has some texture, but not too much texture. Color, but not too much color.  Definitely not too much of both.  I use tumbled marble tiles for a lot of my photos. They have a lot of texture but very little color, so it works.

If you are showing your item on a human model, the rules are a bit different. If the model is attractive, this can work in your favor for getting clicks and it doesn’t matter quite as much if your item is competing with the model for attention. Get them to click and then you can show them more details about the piece you’re selling.

Renaissance Pattern Wedding Set

In the time that I’ve been selling on Etsy, I’m not ashamed to say that my product photos have improved tremendously. Could this be part of my selling success? I think so. I see a lot of items on Etsy that are not presented in a way that shows their true beauty. A clear, properly lit, beautifully staged set of photos makes your item come alive to the customer. I have some definite opinions about what it takes to make a great photo, and I’m going to share them with you. I’m sure not everyone will agree, and there are many people who successfully use techniques other than the ones I do. But if you like my photos and want to emulate this style, here’s how you do it.

Note: My jewelry business was launched with hardly any cash outlay, so another benefit to my favorite method of getting the product shoot is that it is very inexpensive.

Natural Light

The most important element to taking a great jewelry photo is lighting. I am a proponent of natural light, the kind that comes from the sky. For one thing, it’s free. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on bulbs, light stands, light boxes (even homemade ones take cash), diffusers, or any other kind of equipment. All you need is the outdoors, or my favorite, the ubiquitous window sill. No exposure to the elements required!

When I first began taking photos of my jewelry, I did what most people do. I placed the jewelry in an attractive setting like an embroidered tablecloth or a beautifully printed piece of paper, turned the lights on, zoomed in, and clicked. Unfortunately, this method produced washed out photos with a lot of glare.

Washed out, with glare

It didn’t take me too long to figure out that this style of photography wasn’t going to cut it. As beautiful as my renaissance crown might have been, looking at this picture you’d really have to use your imagination to realize it. Not only is it washed out with a harsh glare – it’s out of focus and the background is way too “busy.” (More on that in another post.)

Next, I moved on to outdoor photography. This worked OK for some things, but I was having the hardest time getting a good shot of say, shiny silver items. This was because I was setting my item in direct sunlight – not a good plan for bringing out the texture and details of your piece. The key to good lighting is to have some light and some shadows – but neither of these should be harsh or hard. Harsh light washes out or causes glare, and hard shadows obscure parts of your photo or cause a distracting extra shape in your composition. The solution to this is to use bright, but diffused light.

Bright light from the sun is perfect, but it needs to be diffused. This is what makes a cloudy day ideal for taking photos of your jewelry in natural light. The harsh glare of direct sun gets eliminated, and so does the hard shadow. Everything is softer and more subtle, which focuses the attention on your jewelry instead of other distracting elements. So when there’s a cloudy day in the forecast (for some people this is every day!), take advantage of it to get some great shots.

What if you need to take picture and it’s a sunny day? There are many ways to use the bright light of the sun while avoiding the harshness of its rays. One way is to take pictures in the shade. Make sure your shade is consistent and not dappled like the effect you get under a tree. Dappled light will just make your photo dappled. Find some good shade and then experiment with pictures. Sometimes bringing the item right to the edge of the shade will provide a good balance of light and shadow, while shooting your piece in shade that is too deep can result in a flat, dull picture.

Another sunny day solution is to use the window sills in your home. If you’re lucky, you have sills on more than one side of your home, which allows you to use different ones depending on the light levels and the time of day. Window sill photography is my favorite method for getting the lighting just right. For example, I have a sill in my bedroom that is perfect for getting dramatic shots when the sun is just coming up.

Dramatic morning light

The picture above was taken with no flash, just the diffused, interesting light from the early morning sun.

Other sills in my home give me good results in the afternoon and evening. If you have a large window that allows a lot of light in, you can even move your shots further away from the window and experiment with light balance that way. Whatever you do, don’t use your flash! Find out how to turn it off and then keep it off. If your photo comes out too dark, you just need to move closer to your natural source of light.

Next, I’ll share some of my tips for getting a good background.

Winner of the dogtag bracelet is Kelly, who had three entries, one of which was the 6th, which is what the random number generator at random.org gave me this morning.

Kelly

Posted November 23, 2009 at 1:23 am | Permalink

I am a social worker and work with children and families who have had their child removed for one reason or another. I see a lot of pain and sadness throughout the day, and while it can be really hard, the joy of seeing family succeed is so amazing. I would choose the bracelet and get “Hope Never Dies” inscribed. All these families need is hope that life can be better for them.

And the winner of the ring, whom I chose myself, is Laura.

Laura

Posted November 24, 2009 at 4:31 am | Permalink

I would love to win the ring. If I were to win I would like MOON inscribed on it as my niece always tells me she loves me to the moon and now being on the other side of the world from her, it would make me feel slightly closer to her.

Congratulations to both of you! Kelly and Laura, please get in touch with me at tinahdee <at> gmail.com to let me know your address, and in Laura’s case, your ring size.

I love to give stuff away and it’s been a long time since I hosted a giveaway here at my poor neglected blog. So, it’s time! I’m going to give away two very different items. The first thing is one of my recycled sterling silver personalized rings, stamped with your choice of 5 letters or fewer, in whatever size you like.

Second, is one of my silver dogtag unisex bracelets:

I’ll choose two winners: one person who specified the ring, and one who specified the bracelet. Here’s how you play:

For one entry,  leave me a comment and let me know which item you’d like to choose, what you’d like inscribed, and why.  For extra entries: tweet with a link back, make a blog mention with a link back, become a Facebook fan (or if you’re already a fan let me know), and/or recruit a fan (get someone to sign up as a fan then comment and let me know who). Each one of these actions get you another entry, but you have to make a separate comment for each action.

The giveaway begins now, and ends Thanksgiving night. I’ll be choosing one winner via random drawing, and the other winner according how much I liked your inscription idea, so give me your best!

Good luck.

I got the idea to make a piece of jewelry that could help breastfeeding moms from a customer who was asking if I could make her a couple of my initial rings with L and R. She explained her idea, and I thought it was a good one! She never did do the custom order, but the idea stuck with me. Finally, yesterday, I sat down at my bench and came up with what I think is an even better method for breastfeeding moms. The ring is made from #10 flat sterling wire, and holds a 5mm round stone (there are a lot of different kinds, check the listing). On either side of the stone is a small letter – an L, and an R. Each is facing a different way, so that when you’re wearing the ring, the letter on the left is right side up and the letter on the right is upside down. When you’re done breastfeeding, take the ring off, flip it around, and put it back on.

I’ve been wearing mine since yesterday, and even though my breastfeeding days are long gone, I love this ring! The tiny letters are subtly small, so this is not like trying to wear your nursing bracelet out in public. No one would know what it is unless you showed them. This attractive ring goes everywhere – to the store, out to eat, or anywhere your day takes you. You can even sleep with it on, which helps for that groggy first feeding of the day (or middle of the night).

Sterling breastfeeding reminder ring $60

I had to make a run to the bookstore this morning to pick up my copy of Bust Magazine. The August/Sept. issue is out and that means the Etsy Buy Handmade ad is in there! I think it came out pretty good. It will be interesting to see if it brings any attention to my Etsy shop. See if you can find my little spot.

Not for normal people, but for people who make stuff, the holidays are looming. It’s already time to start planning for that stuff that people will (hopefully) want to buy for presents. It can be a little nerve-wracking for an unstructured creative person like me to be told: you need to be ordering your supplies.. you need to be coming up with designs… you need to have a plan! On one hand, it is full of promise that sales are going to shoot up, but on the other hand, what the heck do I do exactly to plan for this?

I don’t plan in advance for my *own* Christmas, and now I have to plan in advance for someone else’s?

Ah well. I just have to keep going back to my ideal, the one that reminds me that I’m not doing this for the money. If I sell well during the holiday season, that’s great. But I can’t force designs and creativity – it has to be inspired and it has to come from my heart. And so it will.

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” –Alan Alda

Lemon Quartz Earrings $26

As artists, our eyes get used to seeing our creativity and sometimes we get either overwhelmed or bored with the output. I thing sometimes overwhelmed and bored have the same symptoms – you just want to retreat and do something different. In any case, when my eyes get “desensitized” to the beauty of the work that I am doing, I start to feel like it’s all kind of old and stale. I also start to think that others must be ready to see me do something totally new. And that’s where things start to get messed up.

It’s that desire to make something “completely new” and different that can lead to forced, stiff, and even sometimes dead, artistic output. It is forced because I wasn’t led by the creative spirit inside me, but instead by an outside drive, namely, to please the imaginary “other”. It’s not the creation of something new that leads to stiffness, but the fact that the push came from the outside instead of growing naturally from the inside. That’s not good because invariably, whatever I produce when I am being moved by outside forces doesn’t please me and doesn’t have that quality of artistic vitality.

Sometimes when this overwhelming (or underwhelming, or as a friend used to say, whelming) boredom starts, I go back and look at some of my old abandoned projects. I am usually amazed at how much I like them now! I don’t always use them for anything – just simply looking at them tends to inspire me toward other things. Other times, I just put the tools down and walk away for the day, or even a couple of days. I give myself permission to back up from the “trees” or the details of the creative process, so that I can change my perspective and see the forest. Usually just a little while of gazing at the beautiful green forest is enough to convince me that the trees are pretty darn good the way they are.

Sterling wrapped carnelian earrings $35

Since I’ve been making jewelry and taking so many photos of it, I’ve started noticing the world around me in terms of shape, composition, and lighting. I find myself distracted by the morning light shining on one side of my husband’s face and the shadow it makes on the other side; how I can see both his eyes but only one ear; the quality and sharpness of the light and the corresponding shadow… I see potentiality in shapes… I crop on the fly… I have a macro lens in my head.

Solid Gold and Sterling Letter Stacking Ring