Photo Management

I received in our email an article from Fire Mountain Gems and Beads.  The article is here and is titled, "Pixel Perfect".

It has a lot of advice on how to maintain and manage your photo files of your jewelry pieces.  Or of any photos you take with the plan of using them in different media.  I intend to implement this today, if I have time to take some photos.  (I really need to!)

In our case, we may be small and unknown now, but someday we'll have a design worthy of appearing in a magazine or such, and we'll need to have high quality images for printing.  Or, we'll want to make our own printed newsletter.  In that case, we'll need high quality images for the printed version and lower ones for an online version. 

Up until now, I've only been keeping the photos that we use to put on Etsy.  And they are only a 1000px square; Sadly inadequate for any kind of physical printed format.

I hope someone finds this article useful, as I did. 

Having a clean Camera

This is SUPER IMPORTANT when you have an online store.  I realized earlier yesterday that it's been over a year since I've cleaned the lens on my camera, and during that year, the camera went on a vacation to Mexico, was loaned to my 1yr old son several times, and had an accumulation of saliva and dust.

Why is this important?  If you lens is dirty, you're not going to get a good focus on your items, and when you're photographing something close up, like I do for the store, you need a CLEAR and CRISP focus.  I cleaned my lens yesterday and am very happy with the results.  Check this latest listing out:

The focus is clear and crisp and the photo is beautiful!  There is very little noise in the black, the colors are strong and wonderful.

So, how do you clean your lens?  Very simply.  If it's a compact, turn it on, so the lens extends.   Get a cotton swab and wet one end with rubbing alcohol and then wipe the lens down with the swab, going in a circle starting from the outside.  Make sure to get as far to the sides as you can.  Depending on how dirty your lens is, you may want to dry it with the dry end of the swab, then wipe it down with the wet end again.

When it's clean, lightly blow on the lens to dry it.  DO NOT put your mouth too close to the lens.  The vapor from your breath can get into the lens and condense on the inner elements, making it impossible to focus.  Make sure to keep your mouth about eight inches away from the lens when you blow on it.  It should dry after a minute with no streaking.  If it streaked, clean it again.

And, there you have it!  Your lens is clean so you'll get cleaner photos.

Busy, busy, busy!

Well, we've been very busy, making our new apartment a place we want to live in and spending time together since we'd been so busy before that we really couldn't....

Anyway, I've been lax in updating the blog. We have news, Miss Karla is pregnant. We're to have a new addition to our small family in late May. That's very exciting for the both of us. But, she's living in the horror of the first three months.

We've been working some on jewelry. I've finished another sculpted pendant that I hope to post on Etsy fairly soon. I've also started working on my stock photography portfolio again. Since jewelry is our hobby and we have plenty of jewelry stuff lying around, I decided to take some jewelry themed stock photos. A link to my photos at BigStockPhoto is to the right, just under our Paypal seal.

Other than that, it's a beautiful Sunday. So, enjoy it!

Etsy Promoting

Etsy is all about promoting your store, your items. I think they do very little advertising for themselves, let alone anyone listing at their site.

So, to promote our items, I create a thread in the Promotions forum everytime I post a new item. And it just annoys me to no end that people derail our thread to promote their items. Is it so hard to create your own promotion thread? Or are they just afraid that they won't get any traffic to their item? What's the deal? I wish I had an answer. It seems like it would be common sense, courtesy, to leave the thread they created to promote their item alone. Why should you steal their thunder?

Oh, well. That's my rant. Soon I'm going to make a tutorial of product photography and making your own lightbox. Seeing as that's my (Devon) specialty with the store, I think I can do that. I had someone ask about it on Etsy the other day. So, stay tuned and watch for more information!