photo critique

One very dedicated jewelry designer whose photos we’ve critiqued in the past is Broken Teepee Designs. Based on the feedback from our last critique, Broken Teepee has made lots of strides in her photography, and the look of her boutique has changed tremendously. She’s now using shots with pure white backgrounds, has included several alternate views for most products, and has included a few model shots as well … all definite steps in the right direction, and we applaud her for her efforts!

We’ve been in contact with this designer along the way (we always welcome contact!) so we are very familiar with her struggles to improve her photography, and fell pretty sure that many other designers out there share the same challenges. To this end (and with the kind permission of the designer herself), we’re sharing Broken Teepee’s evolution on the blog in hopes that her learning process will help other designers too.

To begin with, Broken Teepee Designs has made a couple of statements in our communication with her that we feel are particularly common. She writes:

“I fear my talents lie in making the jewelry, not photographing it.” She also writes about her camera itself (a very nice digital SLR) “I have tried to figure out how the thing works but I just can’t wrap my brain around it.”

We mention these two things first because sometimes the best answer truly is to let someone else handle the photographs … not so much due to lack of ability on a designer’s part but simply for the reason, as this designer states, that a fashion designer’s talents  naturally lie elsewhere. Creating good photographs takes a lot of time and energy, and is so crucial to selling online. If you feel your photos just aren’t clicking (or that trying to get them to click is taking too much of your valuable time) it’s definitely time to consider outsourcing.

But our Broken Teepee designer is clearly an intrepid soul, not ready to give up yet so we’ve take a close look at her efforts and have a few suggestions that we hope will be helpful. We really think that her photos are so close to being great … a little work in the details and they’ll be there! At her invitation, we’ve produced a few shots of our own to illustrate our suggestions.

(Disclaimer: we’re not professional photographers either, and these images are not intended to be construed as better in any way than what the designer has produced herself … they’re just our attempt to illustrate one way that we might handle photographing a certain product. Our equipment is nothing special … a digital SLR, all natural light, and Photoshop to manipulate the image as needed. These were done outside at our home, yesterday afternoon.)

1. Background shots
On the shots that use a backdrop of some sort, we would recommend something that adds a bit of texture or movement to the shot. A plain, ho-hum  piece of fabric rarely does anything to enhance the product … try to find something things that relate to the materials themselves and add a bit of drama or appropriate color to the shot. In this instance, we thought a piece of weathered wood with its wavy grain might be a good complement to this piece, the “Sticks and Stones”  bracelet.

Sticks and Stones, $99.50 (our wood grain background shot)

2. Pure white shots
We’ve noticed that a fair number of Broken Teepee’s pure white background shots have very harsh, hard-edged shadows. When you’re looking at a piece that you’ve set up to photograph and see those harsh shadows (very common when shooting in open sunlight), the best thing to do is either  diffuse the light falling on the product or move the shot to a different location with softer light. Here are a couple of links with instructions to create an easy, inexpensive diffuser frame:

http://www.shortcourses.com/tabletop/lighting2-10.html
http://photo.net/photography-lighting-equipment-techniques-forum/008Q2g

Another thing we’ve noticed on a number of the white-background shots are some jagged edges on the shadows that look like the background may have been selected and removed in Photoshop to get that pure-white effect (an example would be the Holly Blue briolettes.) Photoshop can be a GREAT tool for touching up backgrounds (as well as tweaking colors, cropping, and about a million other things) but it’s never a good thing when something looks visibly “Photoshopped.” So if you’re using the select tool in Photoshop to remove background areas, make sure to feather the selection to get a nice, soft edge. Or if you’re using the eraser tool to manually remove areas of the background, be sure to use a soft-edge brush.

Holly Blue, $22.50

Our white background shot below was shot outside in soft sunlight, undiffused, on a plain white sheet of paper. In harsher sunlight, a diffuser frame would almost certainly be necessary.

Sticks and Stones, $99.50 (our white background shot)

3. Close-ups
Another suggestion we would have for this designer is to get in CLOSE on at least one alternate view or a product. This is a great way to show the minute details of texture and colors that can be hard to discern on wider shots. Don’t be afraid to use shallow depth of field to isolate details that you want to draw attention to as well, like details of clasps, etc.

Our Sticks and Stones Close up

4. Model shots
What can we say, we’d still like to see more model shots. Using a model is a great way to show how a design will look on, and also a terrific way to show scale an proportion.  Choose your model carefully … you’ll want to use someone who is every bit as attractive as the piece itself and looks GREAT wearing it. For tighter shots like the example we’ve included below of the bracelet all you need is someone with great skin, and some fun clothes that compliment (and never distract or overpower) the product being photographed.

Our Sticks and Stones Model shot

Wow … this has turned into a very wordy post indeed. But there’s no way around it … we appreciate the effort that Broken Teepee has put into giving her boutique a better look, and we wanted to give as much useful feedback as possible. Keep up the good work, and we hope that we’ve planted some seeds of ideas. Congratulations on all you’ve done, and we can’t wait to see what you do next!

Anyone else struggling with the photographic aspect of selling online? Let us hear about it – we’ll try our best to help. Email julie[at]smashingdarling[dot]com.

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