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Photography on a Shoestring Budget by Rebeca Mojica You've made your craft and it looks great! But it doesn't matter if you have the best craft piece in the world—if your photograph is lousy, you could lose sales and be rejected from shows. If you have the money to spend on a professional photographer, that's great (especially for high-end shows), but for most of us, it is far more practical to take our own photos. This in-a-nutshell article focuses mainly on jewelry and will offer some tips and tricks, without getting bogged down in technical details like camera f-stops. (This is a quick tips guide, after, all. You can find plenty of additional technical information on the Internet, including the links at the bottom of this article.) Happy photographing!
WHAT YOU NEED Before you even begin shooting, spend several hours looking at craft photos. Begin to create a collection of the ones you like best. You should look at crafts that aren't your specialty for additional inspiration, but the majority of your time should be spent focusing on your particular craft. Note how artisans position their work in the photo. Note the backgrounds used. What do you like? What is distracting or confusing? What looks professional? Prepare your photo area by making sure your "background" (meaning your shooting surface and/or backdrop) is ready, and the lighting is appropriate. Whatever background you use should remain consistent for all your photos, and most importantly, it shouldn't distract from your work. I like white backgrounds best, followed by black. The reason is that they are both simple and allow my pieces to really stand out, and also, it makes post-production color correcting so much easier! 
You might think, "Whoa, that's cool, but I don't have $200!" No biggie! Just come up with an inexpensive way to diffuse your light. My first set up was literally about $20. It consisted of plain white paper (as a surface) and a large white sheet. Whenever I was ready to shoot, I'd drape the sheet around me and what I was shooting, creating a "tent" with the white sheet. Yes, I looked ridiculous, but that sheet really helped diffuse light. I used the sun as my light source, but to eliminate shadows, I would shoot in indirect sunlight. Yes, this meant that some rainy days I was out of luck, but as long as I planned ahead and allowed for a rain day or two (or heck, three, you never know in Chicago!) when considering my deadline, I was just fine. Once you're ready to shoot, spend lots of time setting up your piece so that it is just right. Plan your photo shoot so you don't have to move the camera and tripod too much. So, take all your votive candle photos at once, then switch to the huge pillar candles, etc. As you're shooting, remember to look at how the object sits—does it fit well within the frame? Is anything being cut out? Is there unbalanced negative space? If it's your first time shooting, and you know your way around the camera, you might want to play around with different f-stops and exposure times. Once you figure out what works best, take notes (even note the distance the camera is from the piece) so you can easily recreate this. If you don't know your way around the camera, spend some time reading the manual and then practice! Focus on different areas and vary the camera settings (once again, take notes!) until you nail down what looks best. This could take several hours because you'll be stopping periodically to check how the photos look on a computer. Never trust how they look on the tiny camera screen! You may have seen this online, but please do not include a coin in your photo for scale. It looks tacky and can cheapen your product. If you must, include something artistic, like shells, marbles, a vase, etc, to scale your piece. Jewelry forms always work well to scale jewelry pieces. One quick jewelry tip: Earrings should be shot hanging, not laying flat. One easy way to do this is to create two stacks of books of equal height. Place a piece of paper on each stack, and tape a glass chopstick (or a piece of wire) to the paper, one end to the paper on one stack, and the other end on the other stack. Then you can hang your earrings from the center of the chopstick. After the shoot, you'll upload and edit your photos. At a minimum, you will probably need to:
FOR MORE craft photography tips (mostly jewelry), see: Bead Photography - how to photograph beads Digital camera turorials and digital photography course - DCVIEWS Tips for Photographing Jewelry Spiderchain's Quick and Dirty Photography Tips
Feel free to contact Rebeca as always with questions or comments. |
