Jewellery Product Photography Guide - Photographing Products
An Image is Worth a Thousand Words (And Maybe a Thousand Sales! Product Photgrapher Not Always Needed and You Can Learn How To Photograph Jewelley!)
Accurate representation of your product is essential, customers need to be able to learn as much about your product as they possibly can before they can make a decision about whether or not to buy it.
The way you present your products online has a significant impact on sales and ideas for photographing jewellery involve numerous props. Taking great photographs of your handcrafted products and learning how to photograph is an essential skill when showcasing designs for your online jewellery website or entering competitions etc.
Photography With A White Background
The main product or catalogue packshots look better where possible with a white background and, optionally, the addition of a drop shadow (pay attention to shadows). If well lit, a subtle shadow can add depth and dimension to a shot.
Lighting
Avoid harsh backlighting in your product photography set up and other setups that cast shadows on the surface of the object.
Keep the lights on the same side of the object as your camera, or slightly off to one side. Jewellery, and in particular, polished Silver is notoriously difficult to photograph. The addition of a strategically placed piece of black card in your lightbox or photos studio that shows as a reflection on the jewellery can be advantageous by adding depth.
They should also be clear with the product in focus, although it can help to draw attention to certain features of the product by making elements of the design out of focus.
Fingerprints or dust on your product produce poor quality results so cleanliness is important.
Be Creative
Showing multiple angles of your jewellery product is critical. It is a known fact that showing multiple product photography views will significantly improve your sales and if you want to sell jewellery online, jewellery product photography isn’t a skill you can afford to ignore.
Additional jewellery images showing the products in various lifestyle situations or worn on a model help to sell them and give a sense of physical size.
Show your packaging so the customer can see what to expect when the product arrives.
Small pictures are simply not effective as a sales tool. Images should be square and ideally a minimum of 600 pixels x 600 pixels and a maximum of 1000 pixels x 1000 pixels @ 72dpi for online purposes.
After the Shot!
A little bit of 'cleaning up' editing in your photo software is normal, background removal or exposure and levels settings can be undertaken easily with photos studio software programmes such as Photoshop or Corel (paid for). Or, as a free alternative, Gimp (downloadable) or Pixlr ( online editing; www.pixlr.com ).
Consistency - It’s very important that you crop and size all of your product images in the same way. Multiple crops and sizes will only confuse customers and lessen the professional look of your Odissa shop product range.
