Great photos are essential when selling your crafts online! Your photos are your sales pitch and your only chance to show potential buyers how well-made and beautiful your crafts are. But if you’re a DIY-er, you probably don’t have a huge budget or a lot of time to dedicate to photographing your crafts. Here are five free ways to take better craft photos!
Get close
Show off that gorgeous detail! Zoom in close and set your camera to Macro to help it focus on the little details.
Imagine you’re the same size as your product and photograph your craft product from its point of view. Going “eye level” makes your craft come alive by framing it the way photographers often frame people and interesting subjects.
Photograph your crafts outside in natural daylight
You might think you need to purchase diffusers and professional equipment to get great photos of your crafts, but sunlight is free and favored by DIYers and pros alike! Even on a cloudy day, photos you take outside in natural light will look brighter, more colorful, and more natural.
Sunlight changes color and angle throughout the day, so depending on the mood you’d like to evoke with your photos, you may get better results if you snap your photos in the hours after sunrise and in the last few hours before sunset. Mid-day sun is the strongest and often comes out too harsh, so try to shoot in the morning or late afternoon.
If you can’t photograph outside, photographing near a window with plenty of sunlight is a great alternative.
For a fantastic guide on working with windows, check out red-brolly’s DIY-friendly guide Photography Tips for Crafters: Using Natural Light.
Pose Your Craft
photo credit: sunsetgirl creations via photopin cc
Try to avoid “fly-swatted” poses that attempt to show all surfaces of your craft. This is especially important when photographing crafts like dolls or toys.
Try to show your product in action: stand it up, drape it around, make it look alive! Trying to show everything in one shot tends to make your craft appear flat. You can always add additional angles, but your main photo should look inviting and interesting, not lifeless or clinical.
Turn off the flash!
A camera flash flattens your image and, in many cases, produces awkward bright spots. If your flash is going off, it’s probably because you aren’t using enough lighting. Try moving to a more well-lit room, or shooting your photos outside.
Don’t shoot into the light
photo credit: Blush Plush used with permission
Placing your craft against a window might look good in real life, but the photo will likely show a very dark, almost silhouetted craft against a bright background. Your camera needs more light than your eyeball does to make out details, and most basic cameras are not very good at dealing with contrast.
Arrange your craft product until the light is on the side you intend to photograph.
There you have it: five free ways to start taking better craft photos today!
Have a great tip we missed? Share it below in the comments!