Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Eye Popping, Sales Making Photos - Oxymoron? Not necessarily.


So many times it's discussed in the Etsy forums that in order to sell jewelry our shops must have great photos. Boy, that is sure harder to do than it sounds. I just spent several hours re-taking photos of several items in our shop and I can assure you, it's a constant work in progress. (Click on photos to see entire listing in our shop).

Give me a waterfall any day and I can photograph it but a bracelet or earrings is a whole different story. For one thing, lighting is the absolute key but it's only perfect about 1% of the time. I've tried lightboxes and ended up with photos with an orange tint. I've tried direct sun, no sun, in the rain (I live in Oregon by the way) and each attempt left something to be desired. I spend hours photographing jewelry and then downloading them and attempting to make them better on the computer. I usually end up with about 25 pictures per item just to get 5 decent ones for a listing. I spend a lot of time photographing our jewelry to try to make the listings in our shop pop!

My point to all this is, when you are looking at an Etsy shop and admiring the talent on display, notice the photos of the objects because I can assure you much work went into them and it's part of the entire package. We all love to create our jewelry or soap or scarves or whatever it may be but a necessary evil in presenting them in our shop is those photos. So many times with an online store they are the deal maker or breaker but the money shots are so elusive. Take notice of great photos and realize the heart and soul that went into creating the item and then presenting it to you. We do it because we love what we do and want to provide the best for our customers. Now, I'm off to take more photos!

1 comment:

missknits said...

haha oh man isnt this the truth!! i am learning still too! i didnt know about the macro setting at first, wow does that make a difference! photos are my hardest part, after all i am a knitter, not a photographer! lol but your photos are beautiful! so is your jewelry!