Things have been up and down with sales lately. I can't complain, I'm selling more than I have in the past but sometimes there is a lul and I play around with my shop to see if I can make improvements to get more item views. I've noticed that if I switch out photos on low visited items, I usually get more views. So, I thought I would give some tips that I learned for taking photos. I am by no means a proffesional photographer and I know my photos can be better, but they are much better than when I started and there are a few things I've learned that I'd like to share.
Camera - I use a simple HP digital camera ($100). I wish I had a better camera, but I just can't afford to buy one. The one I am using seems to be working fine with some restrictions. I can't take photos with a black background, and I have to make sure my camera setting is in "close up" mode. It's doing the trick for me now, so I'm happy.
Light - I don't use a light box, and when I started I only took pictures in the sun. Then I found a lamp at WalMart called a SunLight lamp that has light similar to sunlight. I use that for all my photo taking now and it seems to work really well. It also allows me to take photos at night.
Backgrounds - I experimenting in the very beginning with a lot of different backgrounds, different props for each item and different settings. This became a big time sucker for sure. Having to come up with different items was exhausting. I went to Michaels and bought about 20 scrapbooking background paper sheets. These have worked very well. I choose a design and color that compliments my piece and put it in the back either in a horizontal or vertical shot. Now my picture taking time has decreased a lot.
Props - I purchased a smaller bust-like necklace display in white and I use that for displaying the items up-right. Again, the black display just does something to my camera that makes the jewelry compete with the background and it looks horrible.
Editing - I'm a graphic designer, so I do use Photoshop to edit the image sizes and contrast. I save my files at around 1000px width. I've noticed as I get better at shooting the photos I do less editing, which is a time save for sure.
Files - I save my image files by date and numeric identifiers. I used to name all my images by stone type or style, but I make so many similar pieces, that became a problem. Now, dating them makes it a lot easier to find them when I upload them to the shop. And... if I need to go back and find something I look for the date it was listed and have a good frame of reference for where the file will be based on the date.
Those are just a few of the things I've learned about taking product photos that have helped me along the way.
Anyone else have any tips... please, let us know.
