Smashing Darling Blog

There’s much to commend in the Broken Teepee Designs Boutique from Montana … we don’t know about the teepee, but we don’t see much that’s too broken here!

First, we love seeing this much product in a boutique - there’s lots for shoppers to see here and plenty of places to look to find something special. We also absolutely love this designer’s item descriptions. They have a very personal feel and are colorful, fun, and engaging - the perfect complement to the style of the jewelry. The photography has a good degree of consistency (especially on the main images), and the designer has made very good use of alternate views - almost every image has LOTS of alternate shots to look at.

In terms of the photography, there are a few things that pop into our minds here at the SmashingDarling world headquarters that could help to set this boutique apart:

1. Carry the style though - As we mentioned, we feel that this boutique has a great thing going with the intertwining of the style of the jewelry with the marvelous descriptions. These two elements working so well together creates a colorful personality for this boutique and lays the foundation for some excellent branding opportunities. To that end, the first thing that we would recommend is to carry that style through to the photos themselves. To us, the jewelry has a fun, colorful look with a strong connection to nature that we feel could be continued into the photography more effectively than it is. Many of the images use a gray backdrop with a fade to black that just seems a little somber for these vivacious little gems.

Our suggestion would be to really play up the personality of the jewelry in ways that start to create a unique branding for the store. Don’t weigh colorful pieces down with heavy, dark-toned backgrounds. Get them out into light, try higher key shots that are brighter and more airy. Maybe even try more earthy backgrounds that relate to Montana and reinforce that strong tie to nature - think stone, sun-bleached wood, rough-hewn fabrics, and other simple, natural elements. Remember, though, that the key with backgrounds is not to go over the top - they should always enhance the shot and create a stage for the product, not overwhelm it.

Sea Dreams Earrings

2. Show us your softer side - In terms of lighting, many of the images in the boutique seem to be just a bit of harsh side … hard edged light, strong dark shadows, and often a very angular light quality that appears to come from a small light source. While hard light and deep shadows can certainly be used to create drama in a shot, we’re not sure that they’re very well suited to the jewelry’s personality here. What we would recommend is using a large light source like a softbox (B and H Photo is a great start), or otherwise diffusing the light that’s falling on the jewelry to help create more evenness and soft shadows.

One inexpensive way to get that soft light quality without a ton of special lighting equipment is to photograph jewelry in a light dome or PortaCube. These products essentially create little pockets of soft, diffused light for you to set up your products in (almost like having a tiny, all-white studio.) Check out Calumet Photo’s products: Click here

Lady Slipper Necklace

3. Sharper Images- Lastly, we notice that a fair number of the images are not especially sharp. This could be a very, very easy fix - as simple as shooting with a tripod or making sure that you’re shooting at a narrrow enough aperture. If you find that you just can’t get those razor-sharp images that you’d like even with a tripod, you may find it’s time to upgrade your camera. All lenses (and cameras) are not created equally!

Flirtier Bracelet

Again, congratulations to the great start that Broken Teepee Designs is off to, and we hope that these ideas might really help to create a unique identity for this boutique. So what does everyone else think? Give us something good! As always, we can’t wait to hear from you and hope that our ideas are helpful. Let us know by either commenting below or emailing directly at julie[at]smashingdarling[dot]com.