March 2008

If you sell online you already know that the competition is staggering. Anyone can put up an auction on eBay and even a web site these days. What is it that will set you apart from the rest? Of course, good work that isn’t being knocked off overseas is always a good thing.

There are many dos and don’ts about building a good web site and you can pay someone to do that for you. The one thing that you will most likely have to do on your own is take photographs of your work. Weekly, if not daily. It can be one of the most mentally exhausting parts of your business if you sell online.

I am saying all of this to lead up to telling you, you must have good photos to sell on line. Period. No questions asked. Fuzzy, pixelated pictures that take a long time to load is a sure fire way to lose potential customers. If you don’t do anything else, invest your time and energy on learning to take good photos.

There are many tutorials out there (I’ve done one) but here are some basic tips if you’re close to having good photos but not quite:

1. Take your photos in a purely dark room. Yes, photos are beautiful in indirect sunlight but if you want to be sure to achieve consistent results, any time of day, any time of year, find a way to take your pictures in a totally dark room with only the lights you’re using for your photo set-up. Basements are good for this. I hang heavy fabric over my studio door too block out any sunlight. Different types of light (incandescent, fluorescent, daylight, etc.) compete with each other and can leave color tints on your photos.

2. Let more light in the lens. If you find that your pictures are blurry, change your white balance. The +/- icon on your digital camera. If you let more light in (settings of +.7 and above) your pictures will be more in focus.

3. Minimize glare. You don’t always realize it but there is a lot of glare that goes on in photographing beads and jewelry. Even with the light tents and domes, shiny surface want to reflect. Try holding a white piece of copy paper between your light bulb and the beads. It will further diffuse the light.

4. You don’t need a lot of megapixels. Some people think that to get the best pictures you need more mega pixels. That’s not true. When I finally got to a place where I liked my pictures I was only utilizing the 1 mega pixel setting on my camera. That is all you need for internet photos. Although, these days cameras come with much higher settings for reasonable prices. Higher mega pixels are needed for printing photos but even then, 5 mega pixels is sufficient.

5. Photoshop is your friend. There is a lot that can be done with Photoshop or similar programs. (Photoshop Elements is the consumer level, more affordable version of Photoshop). At one time ‘Photoshopping’ photos might have been seen as cheating but why not use every tool you can? There are many things that can be done with Photoshop that correct lighting, background and shadows without changing the color to misrepresent items. If you got it, use it!

Those are just some of the tips I can think of right now. Would you like to know more? Would you like to know how to use Photoshop (or Elements) to help your photos? Drop me a comment and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it when I blog it! You can even have Bead Nerd posts sent to your email.

{ 4 comments }