When you have an online jewellery store it seems like there’s a constant need for more photos for the blog, articles, social media, email newsletter – it seems endless.
What you really need is a good stash of images that do their job – show off your great creations.
With the redevelopment of our online store I’ve been really focused on creating a library of new images. I’m realising I need more images than I initially planned. It’s much better for my wallet if I can do a lot of the image work myself and I do enjoy the creative side of it.
So if you’re taking your fashion business online, building your esty collection into an online store or showing a friend you really do support her endeavours, then you’ll find these tips really useful:
1. invest in a good quality digital camera. It doesn’t need to be expensive (on sale and on a long term payment program is even better) but it does need to let you zoom in and out of images, control the lighting and special effects.
2. to shoot white on white designs use the snow setting on your funky digital camera.
3. learn how to setup a mini photo studio in your own house. We did this using two lamps with white light emitting globes, white fabric draped over an ironing board and a box to neutralise the foreground and background and a lot of fun taking photos for hours.
4. with digital cameras you can take hundreds of images and then select what you need. So experiment. Take shots from different angles, test out the depth of field effects, look for colour combinations and play with the zoom by coming in and out.
5. learn some decent Photoshop skills. Personally I prefer Fireworks over Photoshop but having skills in both of these tools is really useful.
6. have a good look at the way images are done for some of your favourite sites and designers to get inspiration. When you study an image you can usefully figure out how they’ve approached it.
7. be ready to crop images and adjust the light and contrast effects in Photoshop because what might be an ordinary image could just have a funky detail within it.
Want to share your tips? Tell us what worked for you!
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