First Impressions

http://www.etsy.com/listing/85578050/cherries-and-christmas

The above pictures are taken of the same bracelet.  The photos are taken with the bracelet on different backgrounds.  It wasn't until I have viewed my own items on Etsy amongst other Etsy listings did I know how horrible my photos were.   There are billions of listings on the website, and when I saw my own listing in the midst of the 20 other listing on the 10th page of items I thought "Oh my goodness, my stuff looks invisible even while in plain sight."

I guess until I started online selling, I didn't know how difficult it to was grab a buyer's attention because I buy so much stuff online so easily... Turns out there are billions of people trying to selling similar products online!  So to be viewed, that mug shot of your product better be  ATTRACTIVE or its beyond ignored.

I am sure I still don't have this photo taking science down because I am not getting many views on my items.  (Kinda a bummer!)  But within 2 days of starting to post stuff on Etsy I realized one of my hugest mistakes was to not zoom in enough on the product.

Most people are use to taking pictures to capture occasions and experiences.  So lets say you are traveling to Greece: You'd want a picture taken with a lot of the background visible to capture what you experienced during your trip, right?

Thats something you quickly have to realize to stop doing when you are trying to sell stuff online:  No one cares about the backdrop!  Kind of obvious why right - that you need to grab people's attention with the visualization of the actual item for sale?  Well, I didn't think of it until I glossed over my own items while online shopping.

So, my lesson number one was to ZOOM IN and FOCUS.  (Because we online shoppers are all too A.D.D. to do it on our own?!)

And then the second thing I learned about this type of photography is lighting.  Many websites I read have said that to get a great picture you must have lots of natural lighting.  But I somewhat disagree.

The above and below picture are the exact same picture: I took the picture of the bracelet indoors beside a well-lit window against a white cloth.  The above is the original photograph and below I increased the exposure and cropped it to zoom in more.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/85810444/wiry-braided-bracelet

Now, below is a picture I took of the same bracelet outside that same windows.  I found that it was too bright when I took the picture outside the same window - it casted too much shadow and actually took away the appeal of the bracelet.

I even tried playing with the exposure of the outside picture for a while but that turned out okay... 

In my opinion, the most attention-capturing picture of the purple bracelet was the second picture - when I took the picture indoors and increased the exposure to brighten it up.  I did this with several items and found that I still liked the picture the most when I took it indoors and just increased the exposure.  I think the pictures taken outside on a sunny day just features too large of a shadow making the picture "pop" less (for lack of better words).

My next experiment will be to try taking the picture outside on a cloudy day - maybe this will have a great effect too.