About Photos...step #1

The photo is the MOST important thing of a listing. You can write beautiful stories about the creation of your goods, but a ugly photo will shatter all your words. Wear the buyer clothes: what's the first thing you see of a listing? The photo. Simple. If you want your buyer to fall in love at first sight with your items, you must have beautiful photo. The good news is that you can achieve all with basic instrumentation :) In this tutorial i will consider that you have familiarity with your camera and with Gimp.

In this first step we'll talk about taking the photo.

* Ensure to have enough power, we will take a lot of pictures to have enough choice;

* Place & light: try to take photos with the natural and non direct light, absolutely no flash. Near a window will be the best solution. Place your item on a white backround (or contrasting if the item is white) to take the particulars, and then place it in its natural setting for an overall photo. Be creative and show how the buyer can use your item. I love the white background, it gives a very professional effect to the photo ( it also allows you to check the white balance ) but you can use coloured or textured backgrounds, depending on the color of the object: the only limit is that we want to focus the attention on the product, not on the background ;) use this link to make a light box;

* White balance: the white in your photo has to be white, or all the colors of your precious good will appear different. It is very important when you are using a non natural light. You can find the white balance in your camera menu;

* Over/under exposure: also useful when you are using a non natural light pointed directly on the item (that's always bad...try to use non direct light). The photo will result too bright. The opposite when you have less light than you need. Under expose in the first case, over in the last (you'll need a tripod to have a sharp image);

* Macro: truly important to have sharp images when taking photo near the object.

And now, we are ready to shot! The only advice i can give you is to center the item, because the camere will focus on the center of the image. And then...be creative!

Tips i learned during an Etsy Lab: don't photograph your item on felt or wool, because it's easy to reach a blurry effect, and don't add watermarks, because they don't feature on the front page photos with watermarks!

Soon step #2 about editing :)