10 TOP SECRETS TO CREATING INCREDIBLE PHOTOGRAPHS OF JEWELRY FOR YOUR ONLINE AUCTIONS After photographing over 500,000 images over the past 8 years I have discovered some great secrets for your online auctions to make them more interesting, productive and profitable.
News-Antique.com - Sep 30,2008 - HI!! My name is Candy and I have been a buyer and seller of antique and vintage costume and fine jewelry on eBay for 12 years and more recently on Virtual Gems Emporium the Premier and Exclusive Auction Boutique for Antique, Vintage and New Costume and Fine Jewelry at www.VirtualGemsEmporium.com. Over the years I have discovered the ten essential secrets to getting fabulous photos for online jewelry auctions.
I took photography for three semesters in college as it was required for my degree in interior architecture, The camera I used was a Nikon 35mm and TriX black and white film. As part of the photography course work, composition, focus, contrast, and more were stressed to creating the perfect architectural photograph. Now I am by no means a professional photographer but I have discovered the secrets to getting better than average, attractive and attention-getting photos of jewelry so that the buyer will take a second look.
Of course now the 35mm is primarily used solely by the true artists and the digital camera has taken over. I currently own three Sony Mavica CD1000 cameras... why three you ask, well I love the camera so much I bought three so I would always have one that works. When I am up to full speed in listing auctions I am taking close to 1000 frames a week, so as you can see my cameras get a work out. The Sony Mavica CD1000 is no longer available but is unique in that instead of having a memory disc it actually records the images inside the camera on CD-R disc, which can be easily snapped into an adaptor and popped into the drive and the images are ready to be enhanced and turned into jpegs to be uploaded onto the auction site.
The program I prefer to use to touch up my images is Microsoft Picture It!! as it is very user friendly and has all of the bells and whistles that I need. When using any image enhancement program be sure to not overdo the touch up or you will have a lot of disappointed buyers when they receive an item and it does not come close to looking like what they saw on the auction.
Over the past eight years I have discovered the following 10 secrets to taking incredible photographs of jewelry and of course these secrets would also work for anything that is small in size, such as coins, stamps, baseball cards, cabinet and post cards and more.
SECRET # 1: Most jewelry (bracelets, pins, brooches, necklaces, earrings and sets) is either a gold or a silver finish (whether real or not) and having sets or not all look great on a black background. I prefer black velvet in that due to the nature of the fabric it will not reflect light and actually absorbs the light around the object and it is also very easy to touch up should a spec of dust, dirt or hair end up in the
