General Chat

Sadly, in our online world, pictures play a major role in sales. I have seen amazing leather items crafted to perfection not selling because their pictures, well sucked. Also, I have seen very low quality leather items sell extremely fast due to their beautiful photography and display.

I started this post with the intent of sharing knowledge of photography, our tips and tricks.

The idea is that I will edit the main post of this thread (this one) with all the #photohacks (sorry Phil) the members propose so that new members don’t have to search and read pages and pages of comments to find what they are looking for.

Please bear in mind that the following will be personal tips and tricks and might not work for your style of photography. This is not a photography “course”, it is just tips and tricks we use to get better pictures.

I will start with mine:

• My Gear: I shoot with a DSLR with a 60mm Fixed Macro lens.

• I never use fake light/a light box. I shoot during the day in natural sunlight but in the shade. I find that this gives me a better, warmer picture. Sometimes if I find a good shadow play hitting my workbench, I drop what I am doing and try to capture it next to a product.

• Following on the above idea, I find that natural light gives me much much more colors and hues then with controlled lighting (Mostly because i dont have the means/knowledge/budget to buy the perfect studio photography equipement for that)

• If I have a camera with a Zoom, I try not to use the zoom. Why? Because standing in your place and zooming in and out will only make you look at your product one way. I learned that it is better to have a “fixed zoom” and to walk myself around the product; it allows me to find the best angle to photograph. I think this trick alone allowed me to improve so much.

• If I am not satisfied with a picture I took, I delete it right away from the camera. When you are reviewing your pictures on your computer, you do not want to have 100 pictures to review; it will make the task impossible. That way, you are only reviewing the ones you deemed worthy in the first place.

• DO NOT STAND BETWEEN THE LIGHT AND YOUR PRODUCT! I used to do that a lot. If I needed a photo from a certain angle, I would move around and sometimes position myself between the window (source of light) and my product. Nowadays, If needed, I rotate/reposition my object to get the right angle without having to block the light.

• Try to be not close to the windows/source of indirect light to minimize the "white reflection" you get in the pic (see below)

• Try not to "enhance" the colors (add too much contrast, saturation, etc.), simply because it will totaly change the color on your product and you want the customer to see as close to the original color as possible so that he knows what he is buying.