Taking Photographs of Work

[LAPat]

Do people have any particular tips on building a photo portfolio, particularly for on line use?

I am also probably going to put together a PDF book... has anyone done this and how?

Thanks in advance.

Pat

[badger]

Hi Pat,

I'm happy to help with questions about photography, if that will help you.

Cheers,

Karl

[HorsehairBraider]

Shoot the picture *BEFORE* you box it up for shipping....

Yeah, I've actually done that. Made something cool, thought, "I should get a picture of this" and the next thing you know I've gone on auto pilot and boxed it up and got it ready to ship. SIGH.

Other than that, just shoot pictures! I try and use a consistent background. I used to use this one certain rock as a background, but I've gone all "modern" now and I'm using a white background, or sometimes black. Depends on the item.

[BubbleDragon]

You might browse around the Etsy forums to look for info on this.

I think the biggest thing I've read about is to use a light box. I've not built one yet, but there are tons of tutorials.

[hidepounder]

Pat,

I take alot of pictures of my pieces before I ship them out. I probably only use 10% of what I shoot, but I shoot everything I can, from as many angles as I can, in the largest format that I can. Ounce I have photgraphed a piece I use Adobe Photoshop Elements to create an album page which usually features a large photo of the piece, with smaller insets of the interior, backside, etc. I like this feature of Elements because I can create different backgrounds around the photo's, shadows and other effects which help to enhance the looks of the page. I also describe what the piece is, list any available options, include my contact info, etc. I have found this to be a very effective way to e-mail photos to prospective clients. I can send a number of pages at at one time and I can tailor what I send to each person. It's a little like sending a brochure, which will be my next project. I have also found it helpful to create pages with multiples examples of a paticular item. It allows the customer to consider a variety of styles or options. What usually happens is that the customer takes pieces from several different examples effectively designing their own piece for me to make. It's a win win for both of us. I also priint these pages out in 8x10 color glossys which I pack around with me in an organizer to show to anyone who expresses an interest.

There is a learning curve with Photoshop Elements....there are probably easier programs to use out there...but I feel that the learning curve was well worth the effort. I use a simple Canon 5 magapixel camera, an inexpensive tri-pod and some inexpensive backdrops that I purchased from the local fabric store. The most important thing that I can express, however, is to REMEMBER TO BACK-UP YOUR FILES! I did not and am currently paying a heavy price for my procrastination! Otherwise I could have posted an example! Anyway...taking pictures is extremely important...even if you're not ready to do anything with them yet...you'll be glad you have them in the future.

Best of luck!

Bob

[druidity]

Do people have any particular tips on building a photo portfolio, particularly for on line use?

I am also probably going to put together a PDF book... has anyone done this and how?

Thanks in advance.

Pat

Pat,

I would add that people really love to see what a project looks like as a work in progress. I often take pictures of carving projects next to tracing film with pattern after it's been transferred. Again after it's been carved. Then again after staining and dying, but before assembly. For smaller projects, i don't bother with any of this. For the big custom orders, sometimes it's helpful to send photo updates to the customer. Later on you can use these photos to "describe" the process in PDF brochure format, for a blog, if you do a show where you have a table set up you can set a nice photoalbum out with past work and custom order forms.

I'm going to try posting a couple of samples here...

http://h4xr.org/mzs0

http://h4xr.org/5jr2

I think good documentation is important. Of course if i were still using film i would shoot more sparingly. Good luck to you!

Cheers,

Adam

[JohnBarton]

No matter what take pictures of all your work. I have done hundreds of one of a kind cases over the years and a good 25% of them done in the 90's are lost to me forever because I didn't have a routine of photographing my work before delivery.

I suggest highly that you post your pictures to an online gallery somewhere or put them up on a server somewhere.

The thing is that you should be careful about using a third party place like Flickr or Picassa because when they change the rules then you can lose everything you put there. This happened to me on Flickr where I have 1000 images and they changed the rules and now tell me I have to PAY to see more than 200 images at a time. On Picassa we just "lost" around 500 images. So what I did after those two incidents is to go to HostGator www.hostgator.com and get a hosting account which comes with three FREE Flickr-style image gallery programs and you can install as many of them as you like.

This is my image gallery - JB Cases Image Gallery

This is just a folder on my server where I keep images - http://www.jbcases.com/cases/

This way I can either keep the images in albums or in folders and I can refer to them anytime like this

This way you build your online portfolio and always have something to refer a customer to.

I personally wouldn't bother with a PDF catalog unless you intend to print it someday. The reason I say this is that if it's just intended to be an electronic photo album then just do it like I outlined above. If you do the PDF file then you have to contain the photos inside another piece of software and the file gets bigger and bigger and harder to move around. Better to upload your photos to a place where customers can browse around at their leaisure without having to download a large file. Also you would be tasked with updating this fill all the time and making sure that your customers have the latest copy, etc...

Now if you want to do a catalog and have it be well presented then by all means do a nice PDF brochure that can be printed someday. For marketing purposes the better you present your work the more highly it will be regarded by those who don't already know how good it is.

I can tell you that one of my competitors does just fantastic photos of their work and when I look at their photos I feel that their work is "better" than mine just based on the photos. Their background and lighting is very artistic. As such their portfolio and presentation is way better than mine. So there is a lot of merit in spending time on proper presentation.

I don't have time for that. My friend is going to send me a picture of his setup though. I just traded for an Olympus E-410 SLR and have to learn to use it and build a lightbox to light up our cases in the right way. If I can just get good detailed pix that will be presentation enough for me.

Check out Hostgator though - I can't rave enough about what you get for the money from this hosting company.

John

http://www.jbcases.com/gallery/main.php

[RunningRoan]

Right now, I'm working on putting YouTube to work for me. I've got a commerical that I put together and some footage of my mobile tack trailer posted on there. YouTube is wonderful because I can easily insert the YouTube videos on my own website so my customers can watch them right there. A nice compliment to my website and it adds to my customers' shopping experience!

I don't have any fancy software, just Windows Movie Maker which came with my computer. Movie Maker was fairly simple to learn. You can make a slideshow of your still images, add some text and some music and you've got an impressive marketing tool. You can even mix in some video footage if you have it.

I store all my images on an external hard drive (a small one that plugs into the USB port, sometimes call a jump drive or picture stick). I strongly suggest storing your pictures on something like this and not relying on a website (like Flickr) or your computer's hard drive (in case it crashes).

I've found that my items photograph better outside in natural light than they do indoors, but maybe that's just the crappy lighting I have in my house.

I can see where a PDF catalog would be useful. You don't necessarily have to print it either. You can easily post PDF files online or email them to prospective customers.

[Ian]

Shoot the picture *BEFORE* you box it up for shipping....

Yeah, I've actually done that. Made something cool, thought, "I should get a picture of this" and the next thing you know I've gone on auto pilot and boxed it up and got it ready to ship. SIGH.

You too? lol I can't count how many times I've forgotten to take pictures, or just as bad, been too lazy to set up a decent shot with unusable results.

That is the main reson I don't have a website. I have so few pictures worthy of putting up there.

I'm still a terrible photographer, but am getting better at ,at least remembering to take pictures.