I think the driftwood gives a good outdoorsy feel to it but I’d agree with trying not to cut of parts of the scarf, particularly the ends where a lot of the detail is.

The second close up is good, nice depth of field and not to square on like the first close up. Maybe worth trying different angles etc so the weave isn’t always at 90deg.

I would say though that the background looks like it’s supposed to be bright white but not pulling it off. I’d either get it brighter or change it entirely but at the minute it’s neither here nor there.

Oh and you can buy roll up dual-sided white/black vinyl backgrounds on a collapsible frame thing from eBay for £20 which might be worth a look.

I think the background is great, the shadows represent the approaching dark clouds that necessitate the wearing of a scarf – but I am not very arty so you can probably ignore me.

How much are they? These could really appeal to my local market.

Well at the risk of breaking the rules by advertising, they are between £35 and £45. There are currently 18 in stock all really different, and commissions are available.

Search for LoomyBin on Facebook for more info, or come to the Milkwood Gallery art market in Cardiff on the 11th 🙂

The background is supposed to be bright white, yes. If I turned up the flash it ended up over-exposing the scarf, so that’s the compromise I ended up with.

Re the close-ups, I’ve taken two of each scarf – one at an angle with it sloping away to the distance out of focus, and one more perpendicular. You see one of each on this thread.

Much better than the first version…I think they look really good!

Will you be selling driftwood as well? There’s quite a market for it, especially if you call it sculpture – check fleabay for prices.

I think the scarves show off the driftwood really well!

As other have said the lighting of the background would better being more uniform as it has a gradient from right to left which isn’t the norm (tends to be top to bottom) for product photos.

Lol.. weaving scarves is preferable to combing beaches for wood. We walked all over one beach and only found one bit.

Cheers for the compliments so far anyway. Here’s another effort, having figured out the magic wand tool and adjustment layers 🙂

Raspberry Royale copy.jpg by molgrips, on Flickr

Great shots, and contrary to others I’d say you don’t need a model to show them off. Most people know what a scarf looks like round their neck! Nice work dude

That last one is a mess – your first one is the best with a crisper fold, you need to be able to see the scarf incl. the tassles.

molgrips; first up – please don’t make the mistake of taking stuff on the internet too seriously. The photos are absolutely fine, and kick the ass of most of the images on Etsy. Concentrate on SEO and word of mouth (keyboard). Google ads / Facebook ads / keyword and name everything that goes online (christmas scarf gifts, scarves london (or wherever), winter fashion). You’ll know your market and keywords better than I do.

Secondly; (and I may have said this before) never mind messing about with speedlites – invest in a decent set of studio lights and you will never. ever. look. back.

your first one is the best with a crisper fold, you need to be able to see the scarf incl. the tassles.

Agree with this.
The green scarf photo is the best, in terms of showing the product anyway, I can’t comment on the techie photo geek aspects.

Nice pics, but try to be the scarf…

😆

invest in a decent set of studio lights

Hmm.. I can see how this would be great but it’s a cost.. I already had the flashes lying around.

SEO – it could prove too effective. We can only really make 1-2 of these a week.

I do agree with the comments about the purple scarf. They are all different textures and some hang much nicer than others. In fact, some are just nicer full stop 🙂

The pics are taken though, I’m not doing any more. I posted it up to see if the background was better? I selected it with magic wand, created a hue/saturation layer, put saturation down to 0 and increased lightness. Simple but I think it looks good?

ace photos there..

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that to my eye, you’ve got the background just right (ish) on that last shot..

a pure white background would be too stark, 90s and tacky.. you’re selling a soft natural product so soft natural tones will be far more evocative..
erm.. don’t sweat the details too much.. just make sure that you display the scarf.. cropping the tassles off is just silly..

Etsy is a good checkout counter, but that’s all it can be realistically, the final step in a marketing process.. It’s such a vast resource that just sticking your scarves on and hoping to sell a couple will be futile..
You will be asking your prospective customers to find a needle in a haystack when they don’t even know what the needle looks like.. far from the ideal shopping experience and only likely to snare the odd pathological 24/7 shopaholic..

we started a small online business a few years ago.. pushing your stuff and google and facebook is the only way..

In hindsight, although our business is now a roaring success, I wish that we’d been in a position to put more effort into our product photography at the start..

good stuff

Thanks yunki. We are on facebook already, Google has not yet been looked at though. The difference between us and most businesses though is our volume is severely limited by production capacity. So we don’t want too much demand. Having said that, it would allow us to increase prices…

BG loooks much better IMO. For me you are still cutting off too much of the bottom of the scarf and showing unnecessary/distracting amounts of the bit of wood at the top though.

Ok.. well like I say I had not intended to take any more pictures – I took them at the weekend and brought the images with me. But I guess I could go back and take some more……

Desaturating that background has made a vast difference. Nice work.
I agree about not cropping the tassels though.

Don’t worry too much about fiddling with the colour balance. None of your potential customers will have a calibrated monitor. They will look a different colour to everyone who looks at them.

If I do go back and take more photos, I might saw off that extra bit of wood top right..

Oh and for those who think using a model would be simple – check out for how not to do it. Although she has got some properly modelled shots, the scarf is defintely an accessory in the pic of the model rather than the focus of the picture. Which completely changes the picture and means your eye has to actually hunt out the scarf. Not ideal.

This one is interesting.. she’s used a dressmaker’s dummy and badly ‘shopped it out leaving the scarf hanging on nothing. Could have worked, but too much stark white and harsh edges.

Shop is up:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LoomyBin

The individual pictures look ok but the whole page looks pretty meh. Needs a lot more colour and interest. Perhaps I need a few different setups for hanging them?

We have not yet put the close-up shots on either. I’m wondering if the close-ups should be the main thumbnail for each scarf instead of the hanging shot…

I think that looks good.

It’s now let down by the text below the photos which needs some styling / formatting as it looks quite basic and I don’t think anyone has thought about the layout e.g. use Tabs, Scarf Name in Bold or larger font size, etc.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/114718147/irish-hills-handwoven-scarf

any premier member discount? 😉

Enter the code STW at checkout, I’m sure there’ll be something in it 🙂

Footflaps – you can put formatting in the text? I don’t think we knew that! Cheers for the tip 🙂

code didn’t work…

Oh… hold on a mo…

Tiramisu page needz proof readin

and reported for advertising spam!

Joking!

I must say – the scarves look very nice!
For something hand made and that has a ‘one-of-a-kind’ appearance, £35 is a bargain!

and reported for advertising spam!

Yeah I’m walking a fine line here! Sorry modz..

Alex – yeah everyone says that, my colleague reckoned the 10 foot long Doctor Who style one she just did for a commission should have been £100.

Vinnyeh – try TG2012 as a code.

Footflaps – you can put formatting in the text? I don’t think we knew that! Cheers for the tip

I just assumed it would support it, but apparently not: http://www.etsy.com/teams/7714/ideas/discuss/10363249/

was just joking, would be wrong to squeeze a new business.

It’ll be a nice wee surprise for the wife.

You’re a true gent 🙂 But the discount code was a public one so don’t feel guilty!

Mol, it’s been a while since I last looked at your thread, but just to add my thoughts on the last photo of the purple scarf; nice photo, it shows the scarf well, without distractions, and you’ve got the background exactly right. It’s not dead flat, there’s some subtle shading that looks natural. I reckon you’ve done a first class job, with limited resources, and if you need to take more, you know exactly what you need to do. Nice job, I’m really impressed.
Oh, and the scarves are lovely, too! 😀

CZ, that is easily the most complimentary thing anyone’s said to me on STW (well.. along with the other compliments on the thread 🙂 ). I’m really chuffed, cheers 🙂

True about the limited resources btw – the cheap studio stuff on Amazon really came through and turns out to be entirely usable.

True about the limited resources btw – the cheap studio stuff on Amazon really came through and turns out to be entirely usable.

Yes, that’s my experience too. You may not want to rely on it as a professional, but for a hobbyist, they are all very useful indeed.

My next purchase will be a flash stand and umbrella.

I’ll find the links for the ones I bought. £10 for the stand, £10 again for the brolly holder I think and £6 for the brolly.