Women adore jewelry. Jewelry has an irresistible relationship with fashion. Once Misty Burgess says, “Beauty is who you are, and jewelry is simply the icing on the cake.” Among the other types of jewelry, earrings are the most loved and bought by women.
When it comes to selling online, you know that the e-commerce world is crowded, making it difficult to stay competitive. Only compelling product photos can keep your jewelry business afloat.
Earring photography seems simple, right? But it is not. It has several categories: hoop, stud, dangle, drop, chandelier, cluster, threader, etc. The more different types of earrings there are, the more props and styles are required to photograph them.
Moreover, we’ve compiled a list of dos and don’ts to help you photograph earrings for e-commerce stores more effectively.
Let’s get started.
What you’ll learn in this article
Make Your Creative Earrings Photography Setup Ready
Before you begin anything, we’d like to share some earring photography ideas for creative setup. That will undoubtedly increase the demand for your photographic products.
1. Basic Camera Settings
Realistic-looking earring photos are necessary for e-commerce sites, especially Amazon, BigCommerce, eBay, and Walmart. If your photographed image fails to impress the customers, the product won’t be sold. This kind of product photography requires the best camera for jewelry with precise camera settings.
Set your camera’s aperture mode to f/11 to f/14 and ISO to the lowest, usually 100 to 200.
If you switch to manual mode with an f/14 aperture and set the shutter speed accordingly, it takes earrings photos with a blend of clarity and focus. Stay within f/18 to avoid blurry images. Keep in mind all the factors so you can take precise and high-quality earrings shots.
2. Pick the Right Lens
Since earrings are typically small, close-up shots are necessary, and both prime and macro lenses work well. If you’re starting, you may pick a 60mm focal length for the macro lens or a nifty fifty (50mm) for the prime lens.
The average focusing distance of about 16 to 18 inches might be great for jewelry photography. Therefore, you must select a lens with an f/2, f/5.6, or f/11 aperture. The smaller the aperture, the greater the DOF (depth of field).
We’ve compiled some choices from famous brands, like Canon and Nikon lenses for jewelry photography. That might ease your choice.
3. Use Tripod
A tripod is a necessary item when taking earring photographs. It can give support to the camera when shooting. Because earrings can be small or large, having a tripod allows you to change the angle of your earrings without changing the position. When photographing products, remember that there are rules for photographing commercial product images, just like on Amazon.
4. Choose the Right Backgrounds
When photographing jewelry for e-commerce stores, all you need is a clear background that increases the visibility of earrings. Some well-known e-commerce sites, such as Alibaba, Walmart, and Amazon, require a white background for their product photography.
However, you can use other backgrounds for jewelry as well. The right background can draw the audience’s attention on the earrings. So it will be best if you choose an earrings background that focuses on the concepts and style.
4. Lighting (Natural- Artificial)
A diffuser and a soft, even light are the best types of light for earring photography. As we know, photographing earrings is challenging because of reflection. It hampers its color and makes it unnatural.
Sunlight is the standard light for photographing earrings. The combination of natural and artificial light can add sparkle and highlight the curves, cuts, and details. But be mindful of the unwanted or overexposed reflections.
5. Use a Mannequin Bust or Cardboard
A mannequin bust is a traditional earrings photography style used to show its shape and design artistically. With the black busts, you can make the drop or chandelier earrings stand out and give them a sense of elegance. With the white, you’ll make your earring photo look much better or make it 3D.
On the other hand, you can use cardboard or a jewelry clipboard. Take a piece of cardboard, cover it with white or colored paper, and cut the two upper sides for hanging it.
But using cardboard may take you extra time to make the backdrop. So the mannequin bust is a far better option for drop or big hoop earrings photography. We can even use models to humanize your earrings photos.
6. Props and Materials
Earring photography props help accurately photograph earrings. When photographing stud earrings, cardboard can be of great assistance because you can’t put this earring down accurately, so it does.
But in photographing drop, hoop, or dangle earrings, the transparent thread or strings help to hang and give the photographs their natural shape. If you know how to hang earrings for photography, you can get the desired result, even if it takes some time.
How to Take Impressive Earrings Photo
Product photography is now in demand because of the growing number of online shopping opportunities. So in this competitive e-commerce world, you have to take impressive shots to step up in the game.
Let’s look at how you do it!
1. Clean Earrings Before Shooting
To avoid fingerprints and give the earrings a more appealing appearance, clean them with transparent or cotton gloves.
Use a dust blower to remove any dust or small hairs on the earrings. Then, use polished clothes to rejuvenate the earrings’ shine, but keep in mind that you shouldn’t use them on pearls or soft stones.
2. Be Creative
When it comes to photographing jewelry products, you must have the kind of creativity that creates a craze among the customers. As a photographer, you can use your imagination and technical expertise to style the seamless background, use props, and set up the lighting so as not to distract from the subject.
Make sure to avoid overcomplicating your frame. Remember, you’re photographing products for sale. Use your imagination to its full potential because too much of something may ruin your product photos.
3. Try Different Angle
If the customers roam around the online stores and look at the same angle product photos, they might get bored. So it’s really important to pick the best angle for clearly showing its details, and even try to use multiple angles that help you choose which one the A-listed earrings photograph. Otherwise, you’ll never know which photo is attracting more customers.
4. Focus on Precision
Precision is a must while shooting earrings. Customers love to see the products in detail.
So you must focus on the detailing of the products. Moreover, if the product images are not sharply focused, it might cast doubt on their quality.
5. Manage Reflections
Reflections from the earrings’ details can cause distractions. It hampers the whole execution. Sometimes, when you do model photography with earrings, it’s really hard to manage reflections.
To look natural, you need lighting setups for the model and the products. In this situation, do close-up earlobe photography while they are wearing earrings and bring a diffuser or even a sizable white sheet to soften the lighting. Even you can manage your reflections through
6. Think About the Composition
The composition of your product photo is the most important factor in making it stand out. Don’t think you should just place your camera right before the earrings; think differently about it.
Use the rule of thirds and leading lines to create eye-pleasing pictures. You can also use some interesting props that you style with your earrings to draw the audience’s attention.
7. Consider the Depth of Field
The distance between the closet and the farthest sharp objects is known as the depth of field. It varies depending on the type of camera, the aperture, and the focusing distance. It gives you stylistic opportunities.
The greater the depth of field, the more attention is drawn to the details of the earrings. Don’t use the deeper DOF for full products; it’s only for detailed shots.
8. Retouch Your Photo
Retouching is a crucial part of jewelry photography because of the shiny gemstones, metals, golds, pearls, and diamonds. It’s tougher to avoid shiny reflections or unusual shadows.
So photo retouching is the only way to enhance the details, remove blemishes, and adjust the color, white balance, and lighting through the editing software. If you want perfection, hire professional photo retouchers online for better results and lower retouching rates.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Photographing Earrings
Making mistakes is normal. So don’t worry about it; you just need conscious eyes to spot the errors. There are a few common mistakes that photographers make when photographing jewelry. We’ve provided some earrings photography tips on how to take better pictures while avoiding mistakes.
1. Incorrectly Displayed Earring
If your earrings are not straight and sag on the frame, they will look odd and take longer to edit. Keep it simple and avoid using bright, colorful backgrounds in place of white ones for e-commerce stores. If you make a mess of the surroundings, the focus of your earrings photography will be diverted.
2. Inconsistent shooting
Unusual shadows, a lack of focus, poor tonal contrast, and a white imbalance are signs of poor photography while photographing earrings. Set the high aperture and ideal focus point on your camera to prevent a lack of focus and the automatic white balance mode from preventing color imbalance.
Use soft, even light for uneven lighting and unusual shadows to capture accurate, detailed photos.
3. Visible reflections
The visible reflections are one of the harshest aspects of earring photography. Earrings are mostly shiny products, and it can be quite challenging to shoot them to control their reflections. Instead of shiny surfaces, use matte surfaces. Hang or place your jewelry in a flat, steady place. You can hang and sweep a long white seamless backdrop to block off the reflections to shoot directly.
4. Shaky Images
Jewelry fashion photography must be accurate to draw in the audience.
How good is your lighting setup, or how well do you style the photography background for your earrings if the images are blurry and inconsistent?
It drastically affects the audience’s impression. Use a tripod for crisp, professional-looking shots to ensure accurate aperture and ISO settings.
5. Group Photos
Don’t use group images that are irritating to find out which ones look better on them. A single, high-quality image not only influences customers to make a purchase but also increases the value of your brand.
6. Unnecessary Background
Keep your background simple; if you try to be different, that, most of the time, doesn’t work well.
The more your product backgrounds are simple; the more your customer will focus on your product. So it is better to use a seamless white or light grey color background; sometimes, you may use a black background, which also allows for some marketplace.
FAQs
How do I sell my earring pictures?
You can sell your earrings’ picture on several photography-selling websites, including iStock Photo, Getty Images, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and so on.
Which lens is good for earring photography?
Macro lenses are suitable for earring photography. It clearly takes detailed shots of earrings.
How do you sparkle earrings in pictures?
Soft and hard light are the best sources to make earrings sparkle. Adding a separate source of hard light will improve its sparkle when using even weak light, which can light up the overall piece.
What aperture is the best for earring photography?
If you’re photographing earrings or a stone, choose an aperture between 11 and 17. A deeper field, better sharpness, and better details reproduction will be beneficial to take the best earring photographs.
How do you photograph earrings without a macro lens?
Without a macro lens, you need the maximum zoom, manual focus, f/11 aperture, ISO 800–1600 range, and move into your target position to photograph earrings.
Wrap up
Photographing is an art, and it lies in the photographer’s skills. You don’t always have plenty of room, but your flexibility and creativity can handle challenging tasks.
Though photographing earrings is hard, our given tips and don’ts might help you make your product stand out. When photographing products for an e-commerce store, you must know their product image requirements and your creativity.
Now I hope you understand how to capture earrings and some earrings photography tips for flawless execution. Following the above steps, jewelry product photography can minimize time and increase sales. Be persistent, work at it, and succeed.
