Your Website Photographs Are The Equivelant Of A Retail Store Display Window

Imagine this scenario.  You receive an invitation to attend the Presidential Inaugural Ball in January and you need a new outfit.

You hop in your car and go down the street looking for stores that sell outfits that are appropriate for the inaugural ball.

There are many stores in the city where you live and the first store is only 2 blocks away.  As you approach the store you notice that the display windows all have very long, large cracks in them.  The windows are filthy because they haven’t been washed in years.  The display items in the windows are poorly arranged and the same clothes have been on display in the store windows for several years. 

Knowing that there are numerous stores in your neighborhood that sell similar outfits, will you go into the store that you are approaching or will you hop back into your car and go to the next store a few blocks away?

If you think of your photographs as being the equivalent of a retail store window display you will be able to see why it is so important to use good photographs when selling your jewelry/craft items online.  Otherwise your shoppers will just jump back into their cyberspace cars and go to the next store.  There are thousands and thousands of stores to choose from in cyberspace.  Don’t let your website visitors skip going into your store.

Always remember that first impressions are very important and that you only have one chance to make a great first impression for your website visitors.

Look For A High Optical Zoom Number When Purchasing A New Digital Camera

I noticed that there are now digital camera’s with 12X optical zoom and even 15X optical zoom on the market.  My 2 year old digital single lens reflex camera only has 3X optical zoom. 

Does that mean that you should buy a new digital camera.  My answer is only if you have a digital camera that is 5 years old or older, otherwise keep the camera that you have.  Technology keeps improving and a year from now digital camera’s will be better than they are today.

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

My Newest Website Creation Is Now Online!

I haven’t created a new web site in a couple of years.  This is the third live web site that I have created for myself. 

I am not a professional web page designer, but now I know what a professional web page designer goes through when they are hired to create a new web site for someone.

For this new website I wanted to come up with a new style and look.  That is where the challenge for me began.

My first challenge was picking background and text colors.  This took me about one to two hours to accomplish.

Next, I had to decide on how I wanted the content of my website aligned.  At first I had the text left aligned.  Since I wanted to come up with a new layout that was different from my previous sites I chose to center align the text for this new web site.

Rather than having the text go across the entire page I narrowed the width of the text area to make it easier for people to read.

I decided to place a border around the main text area to make my web site look a little bit more interesting.  I also placed borders around the headings for the same reason.  Since I created this entire web site using Notepad the only things that I can do to make the look of my web site pleasing to my site visitors is to use nice background and text colors and add a border.

Another challenge for me was to come up with a design that fills the screen of my visitors monitor no matter what resolution the visitor uses without anything overlapping.  That was pretty easy to do. 

Another decision that I had to make was choosing between a single column or a three column design.  I made both the one and three column designs and I had a hard time trying to decide on what color background to use for the left and right columns of my site.  To keep from using too many colors on my site I chose a single column design. 

As I was playing around with the three column design I also had to figure out if I wanted a horizontal menu or a menu located on the left side of the page.  I played around with both designs and they both looked good.  I decided to go with the horizontal menu.

 I wanted a menu that can expand or contract and not wrap regardless of the size of the window that a visitor uses to view my web site. 

I looked at several horizontal menus that I found online and in one of my HTML books.  They didn’t work because they became distorted when I shrank the size of the web page.  I kept looking and I found one that works perfectly.

Altogether I spent around 30 hours to create my two page web site.  My site went officially online on October 1, 2008.

In case anyone is interested in looking at my web site the URL is www.inexpensivewebsitecritiques.com

In case anyone is interested in building a website, the second page on my new web site tells you my recommendations for choosing a great domain name.

I created my new web site because I enjoy helping people and also because many people would like having an honest opinion about their web sites. 

I have critiqued about 600 web sites.  If you feel that you may benefit from having me critique your web site, please contact me by using the email link provided on my web site.

Jim Juris

I Joined The Boycott Ebay Movement

I was on a Delphi forum earlier today called Boycott Ebay and this forum is urging everyone that does business with Ebay to Boycott this big auction web site. 

I am urging everyone reading this message to follow suit and stop doing business with Ebay.

Instead of doing business with Ebay I want to help promote a new auction web site that I just signed up with today, for free, as a basic member.  The new site is still in the process of growing.  The fees are much lower on this web site than they are on Ebay and the members of this new auction site are very helpful to each other.

The name of this new auction web site that I would like everyone to visit is OnlineAuction.com.  

http://www.onlineauction.com

 

I am not ready to sell anything on this new web site right now because this auction web site is still building up their memberships.  The more people that become members of OnlineAuction.com the better things will be for both buyers and sellers.

All that I am trying to do here is spread the word about this new auction web site and I hope that you will sign up and then help spread the word about OnlineAuction.com.

Here is a another link related to boycotting the once all powerful Ebay  http://www.myspace.com/boycottebay

 

On a separate note, if any of you want a lesson in what NOT to do when selling your jewelry online you should take a look at some of the jewelry scans and photographs on the OnlineAuction.com  web site.  They are the worst images of jewelry that I have ever seen.

I don’t know how anyone  can expect to sell their jewelry or other craft items online when they are using images that look so terrible.

Those sellers definately need to buy and read my ebook, or at least visit my web site and this blog.

Goodbye Ebay, It was nice knowing you, but I must move on.

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

 

 

Any Questions About Photographing Jewelry or Craft Items?

I know a lot of jewelry artisans need help with there jewelry photography.  So I would like to open up my blog and answer any questions that you have about photographing jewelry or craft items. 

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

 

Good Photographers look At The Subject Of Their Photograph From Every Possible Angle

 

 A couple of days ago as I was walking down the road to take some photographs I came upon this pair of shoes that where hanging from some cables overhead.  Normally I would never photograph something like this, but I took these photograph hoping to show one shoe in focus and the other shoe out of focus using shallow depth of field.  I don’t have a long enough lens to accomplish this but that is ok.

As I was returning home from my photo shoot I noticed the same pair of shoes that where hanging in the air, but this time I saw them from a completely different angle. 

I realized at that time that I did not take the opportunity to photograph these shoes from every possible angle.  Normally this is not something that I neglect to do, but this time I did.

I want to point out that you should always look at the subject of your photograph from every possible angle, front, back, left, right, above, and if possible from below, when you are taking photographs.  This applies to everything that you photograph such as jewelry, craft items, people, pets, nature, etc. 

You never want to come up to a subject that you are photographing and take the photograph from just one angle.  I know that sometimes this is not possible because of your surrounding environment but that is about the only exception to this rule.

I don’t consider these two images to be great photographs but I feel that they are perfect for showing the difference of how the shoes that are hanging down from an overhead cable look when you see them photographed from two different angles.

The peak of this church roof, shown in the upper photograph, adds some feeling of height and interest to the image.  I tried my best to use the rule of thirds for this image to make it look more appealing.

The lower photograph is probably a good example of how most people would take the photograph of this pair of shoes.  Even though I used the rule of thirds for the lower photo, the image doesn’t appeal much to me.

I hope that I have given you a good example of how important it is to look at the subject of your photograph from numerous angles instead of taking the easy way out and just shooting the photograph from one angle.

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

Self Portrait

  I will admit that I have no talent as an artist other than photography.  I decided today to do a self portrait of myself and see if I could make it turn out decent.  I spent all day Sunday, about 10 hours or so, on creating my self portrait.

I Have some brass practice wire for wire wrapping and the first thing that I did was create an outline of a face with this brass wire.  It only took me a couple of minutes to create a profile of a face.  The face turned out nice but it was too tall for the small gauge wire that I was using.  

I then took another piece of wire and made a much smaller face.  This face turned out nice but it was just a face outline.  I wanted something better.

I have lots of beads and bead chips that I haven’t used yet to make jewelry so I took some brown chip beads and placed them in the face outline.

Now my self portrait was starting to look better.  Next I decided that I wanted to give my self portrait a little bit of class so I took some more brass wire and experimented with making a bow tie.  At first I tried to wrap the bow tie around the brass wire that I used for my self portrait but that didn’t work.

I then made a bow tie and just slid it underneath the wire of my face outline.  I used some blue chip beads to fill in the inside of my little bow tie.  Yes, I know that bow ties are black, but this one just happens to be blue.

I was now ready to photograph my self portrait.  I placed the bead chips and the brass wire facial outline in my light box.

The photography is the part of the self portrait that took me a very long time to do.  I tried using different backgrounds for my self portrait and I finally decided on a white background.

After I took some photographs of my artistic creation I decided to use a white bead chip for the eye. 

I add the bead chip to enhance my self portrait and I took some more photographs.  Just when I was happy with my self portrait photo I realized that the white eye doesn’t look good on a white background.  I replaced the bead that I was using for the eye and continued taking photographs.

Several hours later I finished my self portrait photography. 

I wish that there was a way that I could make this item smaller and make it into a pendant for a necklace.  I like wearing necklaces with pendants.

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

 

 

 

 

Photographing Something Green

  My latest photo contest challenge is to photograph something that is green.  At first I couldn’t come up with anything that I thought would make a winning photograph.  A few days ago I had a few ideas pop into my head  of items that I could photograph for this photo contest. 

The first think that I came up with was green grapes.  While I was at the grocery store purchasing the grapes I also came up with the idea of photographing a green apple(s).

If you have read any of my other photography writings you probably know that I try to picture the image in my head before I even touch my camera.  That is what I did with this  grape photograph.  I had a thought while I was at the supermarket that it would be nice to have a contrasting background for the grapes.  While I was at the supermarket I purchased some red cabbage along with the green apples and green grapes to use in my photographs in order to make the grapes and apples stand out in the images.  

The photograph that you see here is one of three entries that I in the photography contest.  I won’t know the outcome of the contest until March 18. 

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

Bird Photography

 Yesterday was a very nice day in Englewood, Colorado so I decided to do some bird photography.  The afternoon temperature reached 49 degrees F.  The sun was hiding behind the clouds mid afternoon when I went down the street to photograph some ducks.  There is very little snow on the ground right now.  Almost all of the ice that was here for several weeks has finally disappeared.

Click on the images above to see them in a larger format.

I spent approximately two hours taking photographs of ducks and geese.  There where probably 50 or 60 ducks either in the water or walking around.  I was able to approach the ducks fairly easily but they wouldn’t allow me to come closer than six feet from them.

I photographed the ducks at different locations both on the grass near the water and also on the rocks along the shoreline of this man made lake.  I enjoyed being close to the ducks as I was photographing them walking around and eating grass and also swimming in the small portion of the lake that wasn’t frozen. 

After I had been there for a while I kept telling myself that I was going to leave, but since I was not cold I just kept taking photographs of the ducks.   I was very surprised when I uploaded the duck and goose images to my computer that I had taken 487 photographs of these birds.  I knew that I had taken at least 200 photographs yesterday afternoon, but I didn’t expect the number of photographs that I took of the birds to be anywhere near 500.  I can store over 800 images on my 1 gig memory card.

I will have to do this again because I love birds.

If you want something to photograph that isn’t jewelry or a craft item try spending some time photographing birds.  I am sure that you will enjoy photographing birds as much as I did.  Bird photography will be challenging.

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

I Made A Mans Necklace For Myself

  Several years ago I became interested in learning how to make jewelry.  I started making jewelry and participating on jewelry forums.  Shortly after I started making jewelry I noticed that numerous jewelry artists on the jewelry forums needed help on how to go about photographing their beautiful creations.  I felt that I could help these artisans because I always photograph my jewelry after I make it.  I came up with the idea of writing an ebook on jewelry and craft photography so that I could teach artisans how to take better photographs of their fabulous creations. 

Once I started writing my Inexpensive Jewelry Photography Techniques ebook I quit making jewelry.  I spent a year writing my ebook and creating a web site for selling my ebook.  That was about a year and a half ago. 

I was looking at the beautiful large jasper stones and the black agate pendant with stripes that I have had for some time and I finally decided yesterday that I would make a necklace for myself with those materials.  I also wanted the necklace to be about twenty inches long because I don’t like short necklaces.   I spend about thirty minutes looking at the various bead and bead chips that I had and I decided to use sodalite bead chips, which are a royal blue color, with the jasper stones in order to extend the length of the necklace that I was making for myself.  Blue also happens to be my favorite color. 

I placed two sodalite bead chips between each stone to extend the length of my necklace.  Several hours later I finished creating my necklace.  The necklace turned out to be twenty one inches long.  I am very pleased with the necklace that I created.

I am also happy that my necklace is twenty one inches in length because it makes it easier for me to put on my necklace.  I put the necklace on by putting the pendant on my back and looking down at the clasp.  I also take the necklace off the same way.  If the necklace was any shorter I would have a harder time taking off and putting on the necklace.

I want to thank the people on the About.com Jewelry Making forum for telling me the name of the bead chips

Of course I had to photograph the necklace.    If you click on the image above you will see a larger image of my necklace.  I hope that you like my necklace. 

I started taking photographs of my new necklace right after it was created.  I didn’t get a photograph that I was happy with at that time so I put my camera away and went to bed.  A couple of hours later I woke up and decided to try some new ideas that I came up with to photograph the necklace.  I tried them and I was very happy with the results.  I finished my photography about 4 a.m. and I went back to bed. 

Feel free to leave any comments you would like about my necklace. 

Jim Juris

http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com