Staging Jewelry for Photographs (the bane of my existence) and an Awesome Secret to Quick and Easy Sales (especially at shows)

So what’s new?  Let’s see… It took me 30 minutes with my new camera to figure out how to stop having the shot focus on the background texture rather than the earrings.

After 30 minutes of photos that looked like that, one after the other, I finally achieved this.

My weirdo brain is still not settled on how I want to stage my jewelry for photographs.  Part of the problem is that I adore change.  But change is not always good for a website.  People are more comfortable with the familiar.  If I keep changing my backgrounds, my website may lose that sense of familiarity and it will certainly lose any sense of cohesion.

Like I said.... all over the place.  It's bad enough that I am so much of an experimenter, my jewelry styles are all over the place.  The least I could do would be to have a consistent background.  Ha ha ha!

I'm pretty decided that I don't like stark black.  I don't like the textured brown and I don't like the slate rock.  I mean, I love slate rock... just not for my jewelry staging.

I don't like the marble-y white background and I don't like the very fast gradient of black to light gray.

The white's not too bad, but a lot of white jewelry photos look too catalog-y to me.  

Well, I'll just continue and keep you posted.

And while I don't generally like to photograph on black, I really like my black leather jewelry bust.  It doesn't show up stark black and it doesn't get covered in lint/dust like my other busts.

I'm going to share a little secret with you now.  If you make and sell jewelry, adding a large lampwork focal bead to a necklace gets SOOO much attention at shows (and online).  I can't tell you how many of these necklaces I've sold.  People eat 'em up.

BTW, if you know anything about me, you know I'm NOT talking about mass-produced import glass beads.  Beware of those as the quality is inferior in just about every way possible.  Remember, your customers want VALUE, not bargain.

I buy orphan lots of Alex Spinglaschell beads.  Alex is a lampworker out of Santa Cruz, California.  Her little masterpieces are fully kiln-annealed and properly cleaned.  Click here to see what she has for sale at any given time... and keep checking back because you want to buy, not only her singles, but her orphan lots.  

Here's a batch of orphans I added to Chinese knotted silk cords.  Click on the photo to see close-up images of the beads.

Super easy, yet each finished necklace is one of a kind and totally eye-catching.  This is jewelry that will spark conversation, and then you get to talk about how the artist makes each bead in a torch, adding one color after another of molten glass.

Next I'm going to take another batch of Alex's orphan beads and put them on sterling silver chains.  Stay tuned for those.

Value vs Bargain... the choice is always yours