Photography - Finding the Sweet Spot (of focus)

I'm going to use a photograph that is a much larger scale than product photography typically is, in order to better illustrate where the focal point falls in an image.





In the first photo, the majority of the picture is out of focus, but near the middle there is a crisp area of pavement that catches the eye. The second photo has been cropped so that the focused area is closer to the bottom of the frame, which feels more natural to the eye than having out of focus area at the bottom.

This is because our eyes find it natural that the closest part of the picture is in focus, but when the bottom of the frame is out of focus, our eyes attempt to bring that area into focus when we look at it. It can actually cause physical discomfort.

When you are taking photos of small items using a macro setting on your camera, you want the leading edge of the object to be in that crisply focused area. Here is an example:



Here is the photo before cropping, with a line indicating where the focus zone falls:



When cropping your photos of small objects, it is best to have that focus zone on the bottom 1/3 line. This is a concept of photography, where the visual frame is divided in thirds horizontally and in thirds vertically. In framing a photo, the guideline is to have the primary subject on one of the lines delineating the thirds of the photo. Here is the image again, with an overlay grid showing the horizontal and vertical thirds:



Notice that the focal line which was marked earlier is now lined up with the bottom 1/3 line, and the left most area of the product is approximately over the left 1/3 line. When cropping, the crop would follow the outer edges of the grid, so that the thirds remain lined up as they are.



That leaves you with a photo cropped so that the focal line is in a very comfortable and natural spot, which draws the eye (and the viewer) in!

The Weekly Ten - Fab Craft Show Booths

For this week's post of ten things I adore, I want to share with you some lovely craft show displays found on Pinterest and Flickr. Thanks to the people who shared these to inspire us all!























Such a great group of displays, I for one can learn a thing or two from each of them!

You can find more of the same on the JellyPins Pinterest board! Till next time~
Amber

Using the Elements of Art to Create Balanced Show Displays

In art, there are basic elements to every work and the way that these elements are used can have great impact on the visual appeal of the piece. As follows, I will discuss the elements and their application to a craft show (or store) display. As always, some rules are made to be broken and these are no exception. If you feel your product or display would benefit from going outside the lines, by all means do so. The best way to find your ideal display is to experiment and find out what works and feels right for you!

(the elements of art can be found here on Wikipedia if you'd like to learn more about them)



Texture - The best way to use and highlight texture is to include a few different types to break it up. Typical craft show displays do so by their nature, as the tablecloth, display fixtures, and items often have different textures.

To bring out the texture of the items you're displaying, place them against contrasting textures. Some examples include fabric items against either a smooth surface or a fabric with a heavier texture, smooth & sleek jewelry against a richer textured surface, highly textured jewelry against a fine, smooth surface.

To reduce busy-ness, select a limited number of different textures, say 3 or 4, and use them consistently throughout your display. If your display already feels very smooth and lacking in texture, adding some in can add more depth and even encourage people to reach out and feel both the display and the items for sale.

Space - There are two kinds of space: positive and negative. Positive space in a display would be the items displayed as well as tags, signs, containers and fixtures. Negative space is the area between items on display, areas where the tablecloth or background is visible, and space between the position of containers and fixtures on the table surface or wall.

The ratio of positive to negative space can be a personal preference, for a display that has an overall feeling of fullness without busy-ness, I personally prefer a ratio of between 50:50 and 70:30 (positive:negative). This means that only half to two-thirds of the visual space is filled with content. This will allow visitors to your booth an area for their eyes to rest in between the lovely items displayed.

Shape - In a display, shape factors in on the overall theme of the space. Displays can have very broad, flat shape to thin & wiry shape, or round & dimensional to flat. But, to keep a display coherent and cut down on visual clutter, the shapes of the displays should relate to each other. Two wire displays look more consistent than a wire display with a pegboard display. Shallow round glass bowls mixed with tall metal buckets will add visual clutter.

Color - The number one place that visual clutter comes from (other than too many objects) is too many colors. Pick a palette of 2-3 colors that suits your work and your overall brand image, and stick with it. A great scheme is to use neutral colors as a basis that are very complimentary to one another, and then have one or two bold colors as accents. Accent colors are best used in small bursts, but make sure the color occurs often enough throughout the display that it doesn't look out of place.

In my own displays, I utilize black, white and grey as the basis of my display, then I accent it with a bright teal. This scheme matches my business cards and logos, and colorful jewelry pops when it is against clean, neutral colors.

A blind spot that can occur with color is the open areas of your display. If at all possible, design your booth to have a backdrop, be against a wall, or use displays that are not see-through. This way the table, people or scenery behind you will not interact with your display by adding colors that distract.

Tone/Value - This refers to the difference between areas that are light and areas that are dark, and how great the difference between them is. You can utilize the difference in value to highlight your products and make them visually jump off the displays. Placing dark or brightly colored items against a light or pale color, or placing light or metallic items against a darker color will help them to stand out.

You will also want to pay attention to value when it comes to each component of your display. The tablecloth, containers and fixtures should have a very consistent value so that they blend well together and to not try to pop against each other, drawing visual attention away from the items you are displaying.

Line - The lines that you create within your display by placement can lead your customer's eye on a journey. By using regular height of displays, or a deliberately uneven height, you can control the flow.

A great example of this is having your taller displays even across the top or tallest in the middle, and lower displays lowest in the center rising as they approach either edge of the space. This creates a visual "loop", where the eye will typically fall somewhere in the middle and then follow the line around and be drawn into the upper and lower parts of the display.

If there is too much of a gap in the height of display items, it can feel unnatural or even draw your customer's eye over to the display next to you. Having items elevated with height on one side and not on the other can make your display a roller-coaster for the eye, so that it slides downward, out of your booth and into the next. By creating symmetry or a loop, you get the eye to naturally flow back into the space from the edges, which can help to draw people in.



Using these concepts together to bring consistency and movement to your display can help encourage people to spend more time and really explore what you have to offer.

Once you have brought together an idea for a display that is consistent, minimal and cohesive, try adding in some variety in color or shape. For example, if you have display pieces which are all the same size, shape, color and texture, it could feel very zen, or you may find it boring. Try mixing up one of the characteristics, so that they are the same in three elements but different in one. You could try all glass bowls that are white and have different shapes, or fabric bins that are each a different color but all the same size & shape, color coordinated to the items that are in them.

If you like this post, let me know! I may do more in the future, applying the elements of art to photography, jewelry design, etc!

Amber

Photography - Reaching Nirvana

And of course, by Nirvana, I mean a white background in photos.  Neither is easy, though I dare say getting a white background is easier than reaching Nirvana.   Maybe, I can make the white background thing a little bit easier.  That way we can all put our energy into finding Nirvana. LOL

So the first place you want to start is to mess around with settings on your camera.  Fortunately, even among point-and-shoots like mine (Canon Power Shot SX110 IS), those settings are fairly standardized.  Some cameras may not have some of these, if you're not sure about yours check out the manual.  (or search for tutorials online for your specific camera and it's features, which will probably be clearer)

The setting I've used in the past was Indoor.  I'd set it to macro, maybe bump up the light balance a bit and take dozens of pictures.  Then, I'd go into my photo editing software to clean it up, and find that the backgrounds weren't quite so pretty and white as they looked on the camera screen.  I've been doing this for years, and somehow I still forget on occasion that my camera screen is a little overly bright.  Anyway, in using the software to edit, I would hit a point where I could either get a nice white background -or- I could have the colors actually look like the thing I had photographed.  Not a fun choice!

                                          Way too much magenta!  Ewww.

So, I decided to try the Program setting on my camera, and change the white balance setting to Tungsten.  This is because I use regular non-fluorescent bulbs, which have a yellow/orange cast.  Also known as warm white!  Lovely in rooms, not so much in photos.

                                          Too much blue, not enough green.

This setting produced an improved color temperature over the indoor setting, so I shut off the lights on my lightbox and was about to upload the pictures...

And then it occurred to me that perhaps I should try shooting without my lights on at all.  It's pretty bright here in Phoenix, and the open side of my lightbox faces 1/2 a wall of glass, so it was worth a shot.

                                          Pretty close to aaahhh-mazing!


Bingo.  The color temperature looked considerably more neutral on Indoor with the lights off than it did on program with the lights on.  So, I cranked up my light balance (the +/- button) to +1.5 and...


Bam!

                                         There it is!

All I had to do at that point was up the contrast a bit to get that perfect white, and use a big white paintbrush to remove the darker areas around the edges of the picture, to arrive at the final image:

                                                      I dream about pictures like this.

So there you have it... a brilliant white background and all I had to do was turn off the stinking lights.  Who'da thunk it?  Okay probably everyone else but every now and then I'm not as bright as I pretend to be ;)

So, here are all of the pics side by side so you can see the startling differences!

Hope this helps!!


Next installment will be about ... WHY IS THERE GLITTER IN MY ICED TEA?  Oh, sorry.  Noticed some glitter in mah tea.  Risk of that craft that I do.  Anyway,

We'll be talking about macros and cropping.  Or, "How to make the focal point feel like it is at a natural place in the photo so the viewer's eyes don't go buggy"  It matters more than it seems like it should!

<3
Amber

Photography Revisited pt 1

In the time that has passed since I last wrote about product photography for online shops, I've learned something interesting.

I turned my shop into an accidental guinea pig when I switched all of my photographs to a grey slate background from plain white.  I had always liked the white, but I found it much easier to get natural looking colors by shooting on a grey background.

I had not realized the side effect that changing my pictures would have.  When Etsy users are building treasuries, there are certain qualities the look for in photographs, one of the dominant traits being a white or very pale background.  Treasuries like these are far more likely to make it to the homepage as well.

I have read many past forum threads where users complain about the overtly white backgrounder treasuries, with feelings that range from them being boring to being overtly exclusive and unfair.  However, sites like Amazon require sellers to list the main photo with only the item for sale pictured, and it must be on a white background.  I realize that Etsy did not start out as being remotely in the same realm as amazon, but as Etsy has grown they have needed to compete with such web giants, and let's face it, if they did not then there wouldn't be as many users browsing the site as there are today.

But, I digress.  The important takeaway from my unintentional experiment is that the number of treasuries my items have been featured in has dropped like a stone.  It started out somewhere around one or more per day to maybe two per week.  Also, now when my items are in treasuries, it's usually in that last row - the one that isn't seen on the front page unless other items sell while it's up.  In unison with the drop in treasuries, my sales dropped as well.

Knowledge gained: white backgrounds matter, as does the color balance of the overall photo.  You don't need to give every photo on a listing the white background treatment, just the first photo.  ( the one the thumbnail generates from)

Of course there are other factors, including depth of focus, sharpness, and positioning, but if all those elements are in place but the background isn't white, you could be missing out on treasury time!

As always, don't be afraid to experiment and find out what works for you- let the numbers be your guide as to whether your pictures are hurting or helping your product's visibility.

Next time we will start digging into how to get crisp white backgrounds.

Till then! <3

Amber

Finding Your Voice in Jewelry Making

Being on Etsy or any other handmade site exposes us to the work of other designers and to trends in the marketplace.  There is a great amount of inspiration to be found here, and finding that great new thing that is happening is exhilarating.  We are driven to imitate what we see to a point, and artists of all types throughout history have imitated others in order to expand their own technique.

This is a valuable process that you can harness to find your own unique vision regardless of which art you work in. As jewelry designers, there is a somewhat standard way to work as you learn, in putting various beads, chains and findings together to create your work.

To broaden your knowledge and abilities, seek out artists on Etsy whose work you admire. Try to recreate what they've done - this is a tried and true method passed down from renaissance artists. Before an artist became a master in their own right, they worked as an apprentice to a master, duplicating the master's work and even doing some of the underpainting work for the master's finished pieces. Through this practice the understudy learned the technique well enough that when they were ready they could go and do their own unique work while drawing from what they had learned.

The key is to imitate other artists only to the point that you are learning new techniques - do not strive to replicate the work of another artisan alone, learn from many and continue to do so even after you've mastered many techniques. As you work you will be able to incorporate the lessons you've learned into your own unique style that speaks from your heart.

As always, create what you love and is beautiful to you, and never stop learning!

Amber