To succeed in the jewellery e-commerce business, it’s crucial to perfectly represent your products through well-photographed images. This not only boosts your chances of attracting new customers but also ensures a consistent display of your designs. However, if you don’t ask the right questions, it can be challenging to create high-quality images and effectively market your online store. This guide provides information on understanding material properties, taking jewellery pictures, displaying jewellery, arranging jewellery, deciding between flash or natural lighting, and choosing the best jewellery photography gear.
How do you know the special qualities of the materials?
A piece of jewellery is typically composed of several elements and materials. Each of them reacts differently to light. Photographing a jewellery piece can be difficult. If you want to highlight the stone’s size while also managing light scatter inside the gem, you must first understand how each of the various materials responds to light. Conduct tests in which you vary the light intensity while photographing various pieces of jewellery and gemstones. You’ll quickly get to know the various qualities of the materials by comparing the various outcomes. Proper lighting will emphasize the size of your stones.
How can you take pictures of jewellery that features various pieces?
For online retail, it’s critical to understand how you arrange the jewellery in your shots. There are certain guidelines in the jewellery industry that you must follow if you want to showcase your products to their full potential. Furthermore, having access to the appropriate product photo equipment and settings is critical for quality control. Even with the best tools, like a photo editor, it is more difficult to capture fine details with an average-quality camera or lens.
What strategy should you follow when putting your jewellery on display?
To effectively showcase your jewellery, it’s essential to include at least one horizontal view of each item, allowing customers to examine the item and navigate the available gemstones. Displaying similar photos side by side helps customers navigate the store. Some jewellery, like rings, may require a stand display or special positioning for proper lighting and photography. The goal is to highlight specific details, such as the inner surface of a ring, head shape, or gemstone culet. The vertical display allows for easy illumination of each facet, allowing control over the fire and colour of the stones.
Three or four photos are usually sufficient for each piece of jewellery. Use one flat view (flatlay) to showcase the item as a whole and two shots to highlight details. One photo of the item on a mannequin or model is always a good idea because it allows potential customers to visualize the item in context. Try to use simple, effective images with the same number of images and positioning for each item within a range to create a clear, uniform, and intuitive display.
What are some quick tips for arranging jewellery?
- To hold a ring vertically, use a dot of glue from a glue gun, as it is transparent, easy to remove, and resistant to the weight of the piece of jewellery. If you are allergic to Photoshop, position the ring on its side for a simple shot.
- For horizontal photography, avoid using earring backs like hooks, screw backs, lever backs, or push backs, which can be inconvenient and require repositioning.
- Punch the back of the earring through a piece of white card to avoid retouching the final image and achieve flat shots of the earrings.
- Handle your jewellery with care using a pen, Q-tip, or fine needle rather than fingers.
- Always wear gloves when placing and arranging your jewellery to prevent smudges and fingerprints from appearing in the final image. Clean oxidation-resistant jewellery with soap and water, a leather chamois, or a duster spray for dust and fine particles.
Is it better to use flash or natural lighting?
- Flash lighting
These are ideal for photographing jewellery. Not all materials react to light in the same manner. For example, gold and diamonds reflect light, whereas leather absorbs it, so one will require more light than the other. Using flash is an easy way to adjust the intensity of your lighting.
Diamonds are challenging to photograph due to their transparency and the reflection of light inside the stone. Proper lighting management is crucial to avoid visible light scatter and the merging of pavé-set diamonds. Small directional LED flashes can highlight each facet of diamonds, while flash lighting and a full LED lightbox maintain the same light density for the backdrop, unlike natural light that changes and cannot be easily controlled.
- Natural Light
Natural light is ideal for still-life photography, whereas flash lighting or extremely bright LED environments (full LED lightboxes) are far superior for jewellery Photography Montreal. Additionally, you should tailor your lighting setup to your deadlines and the number of products you need to photograph. Try to strike the right balance between productivity and image quality.
Which photography gear is best?
The type of camera and lens you use have a significant impact on the quality of your photographs. For example, if you use a low-quality lens, you will only get average results. You must strike a balance between your budget and the available options on the market. However, in general, the best options are a reflex camera and a fixed lens. Fixed-focal-length lenses are much more sensitive to light and will always produce higher-quality images than zoom lenses. When photographing e-commerce jewellery, the lens is equally or more important than the camera. Macro lenses are a popular choice for photographing small items such as rings and gemstones.
Finally, e-commerce jewellery photography can be difficult at first, but if you take it step by step, you’ll quickly gain confidence and expertise. So, just one more piece of advice: take a lot of test photos.
