Your Jewelry Brand Needs Top Quality Product Photography
Selling Jewelry Online is all About Branding
Building a jewelry company that primarily sells online can be a challenge. It’s a competitive space to begin with and customers are generally looking for the best value for their money. A lot of times converting a new visitor boils down to earning your customers trust in the small amount of time you have them on your site. This is where a strong, cohesive brand can become your best tool to convert customers on your site, and you need to be thinking about product photography as an extension of your brand.
Your Product Photography is Part of Your Brand
You have a product that you’re proud of, a company name and logo that you love, a website that you invested in, and a marketing campaign that is bringing in traffic. What are your potential customers seeing once they are shopping on your site? Your customers have noticed everything you’ve invested so far, we know this because they made it to a product detail page (or PDP). Once there, are they seeing images that look like the left or the right? These specific images may not be on brand for you, but do highlight the differences in quality.
Laid down and shot quickly with an iPhone and basic lighting set up. Piece looks dark, stones have no detail, color is incorrect, and image is low resolution.
Styled and shot with a camera and lens that is well suited for jewelry, custom lit, focus stacked, and lightly retouched to clean up dust.
Jewelry is Hard to Photograph Well
A jewelry piece is often constructed of metal and precious or semi-precious stones, and those two components photograph very differently. Often times, to show off both metal and stone in a way that is true to life, you may need to composite multiple images together. In order to shoot the metal in a way that controls reflections, the stone can look washed out, losing detail, however when you achieve good color and detail in the stone, the metal often has distracting reflections and highlights that are lost. An experienced jewelry photographer not only knows how best to approach these two parts of shooting a piece of jewelry, they know how to build a set and process that will allow them do that consistently across multiple pieces and types of jewelry.
Post Production for Jewelry is Specialized
Retouching is a standard part of the process in quality product photography for jewelry. One significant reason for this is that metal colors often appear different in person than when they are photographed. There are a lot of things that can impact this, but in order for all of your gold, silver and rose gold pieces to match each other, you need to be adjusting color as part of the post production process. Another thing to consider is everything that shows up when you zoom in very close to the product for photography. No matter how hard you try, there will be dust and tiny hairs that you can barely see with the naked eye. Cleaning up dust off the metal and shooting surface should be a standard part of your jewelry retouching package.
Invest in Showing Off Your Hard Work
You’ve worked hard to design and develop your jewelry line and now we need to get potential customers to see what makes your collection stand apart. Hiring the right person to photograph your jewelry and highlight all that qualities that make it unique can make all the difference in not only your conversion rates, but in how your brand is perceived. If you are interested in discussing your collection with me, and potentially sending me a few pieces to do a test shoot, please click here to reach out.
Do you need more help with your product photography or strategy?
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The Riverside Citrus Industry
Growing up in Riverside, CA and spending some days off of school in the front office of a citrus packing house, I have a special relationship with the citrus industry, from a teenager hanging out at the Orange Blossom Festival to growing into a commercial photographer who often finds himself using citrus as a source of inspiration.
An almost forgotten still life test from a few years ago, citrus fruits often become a still life subject for me growing up in Riverside, CA, a city that launched the Southern California citrus industry.
Growing up in Riverside, CA, there was no missing the impact of the citrus industry on the culture of the city itself. If the annual Orange Blossom Festival wasn’t enough, you couldn’t miss the small orange groves that dotted most residential neighborhoods (before the real estate boom/bubble of the early 2000’s dug out the orange trees to make room for more houses).
I came across this image when attempting to catalog the approximately 32,478 images from one of several hard drives where I digitally hoard my work. After scrolling through years and years worth of product photography, commercial still life tests, family snapshots and mobile camera back-ups, I ran across this little studio test that I think I may have entirely designed around that weird hanging candle thing in the background.
I don’t love this image, but it does bring to mind memories of my childhood that was shaped in part by what was left of the citrus industry in Riverside. When I was a child, my mom worked in the front office of a citrus packing house, where I would occasionally get to peak through the door where oranges would rush around on conveyer belts and cascade into crates that would load onto trucks and head off to their final destination.
For the city of Riverside it is a history that is celebrated through art, events, and those of us that have memories of being directly impacted by the fruits of those two original naval orange treess Eliza Tibbetts planted in Riverside back in 1873.
For more on the history of the Riverside citrus industry, check these links:
History of the City of Riverside
Parent Naval Orange Tree in Riverside
A Cultural Tale of California’s Citrus Industry - YouTube
Hidden Histories Behind California’s Citrus Industry
Photo Studio Challenge - Portrait of a Loved One
A couple of weeks ago the team of photographers, stylists and support staff that I work with kicked off a bi-weekly studio-wide photo challenge (images were posted here). Every two weeks we pick a theme and each person can shoot an image that relates to that theme.
This week our theme was: A portrait of a loved one, without showing them in the image. So in other words, an object, person (other than the "subject" of course) or place that reminds you of that person.
Here are the results!
Ashley Paulus
Product Stylist Ashley Paulus photographs her parents wedding rings with her iPhone and natural light.
Bonnie Warrington - BonnieWarrington.com
Photographer Bonnie Warrington shot this still life with her DSLR ann Natural Light. These items represent her boyfriend Scott.
Dani Alvarez
Product Stylist Dani Alvarez shot this still life of items representing her beloved dog Schmoopie
Daniel T Jester
A Glenfield Model 60 just like the one my Grandpa took me to shoot when I was a child.
Dave Uzzardi - DavidUzzardi.com
Dave Uzzardi's submission to the challenge, a subtle and somewhat abstract image where the subject slowly reveals itself to the viewer after some time.
Emily Wilkerson
Product Stylist Emily Wilkerson shot this antique rocking chair that has been in her family for years. t's a reminder of her grandparents.
Karen Utley - KarenUtley.com
Photographer Karen Utley shot this still life in remembrance of her mother
Karyl Alvarado
Studio Coordinator Karyl snapped this shot of a song her and her grandmother played together during their short meeting before her grandmother had to head back to the Philippines.
Kimmy Ann Snow
Product Stylist Kimmy Snow set up this shot of her Father In Law's dog tags and ashes. She never met the man, but he is an important part of her husband life, and feels a connection.
Lindsay Barker
Product Stylist Lindsay Barker shot this still life installation that represents friend from across the country that she has made in her life.
Vanessa Celotto - StyleeGrace.com
Stylist Supervisor Van Celotto snapped this to represent the staff of the studio as her loved ones. Awwwwwww.
Vivian Nguyen
Product Stylist Vivian Nguyen styled and shot this still life that represents her mother who lives in Seattle.
As you can see, the turn out for this weeks challenge was BIG. It was so exciting to see how everyone interpreted the theme and what they submitted. Stay tuned for the next Studio Photo Challenge, where the theme is Food.