Jewelry Photography I

I have rings, earrings, bracelets, pendants and talismans made and ready to be sold. So what is taking me so long to set up this Etsy shop and get them on the market? The photos are the obstacle.

I hope that this does not turn into a rant but I’m sure that it will take me more than one blog to explain what I feel are jewelry photo requirements for the internet presently and to which standard I must comply.

Let me start with the number of photos to be taken and manipulated. An Etsy store presentation allows for one main photo and 5 thumbnails of each object. That makes 6 photos. To get 6 valid photos one must do a minimum of 2 exposure settings per view. 6 times 2 makes 12 photos per object.

I import the photos to a photo software for final selection, two clicks of contrast and color correction, cropping, sizing and preparation for web and devices.

I am presently planning on showing 20 objects in my shop so am looking at taking and elaborating 240 photos. I can see no way to batch process them so it looks like a mountain of time and work to me.

What's in a phrase?

When I decided to set up a shop on Etsy to sell my jewelry and write this blog, I needed a blog name. Spontaneously I thought to use the phase that expressed my intention, “Etsy, Here I Come”. It seemed light-hearted and original enough to attract readers.

Original, did I say? During the process of setting up the blog I seemed to run across the etsy here I come phrase interspersed on other web pages so I decided to see how frequently it was used. For the phrase “Etsy, Here I Come” a Yahoo search came up with 472 pages and the Google search showed 664 pages. The pages were mainly of blogs or forums. Just like me.

I will need to make sure that my jewelry is unique and makes my store special.