How to Photograph Your Handmade Jewellery

Do you need photographs of your handmade jewellery for your own website, marketing materials?

Well, you CAN produce these yourself.

I received some great feedback about the handmade jewellery photographs on the Nisha Halo Jewellery website and a number of people even asked if I hired a professional photographer. The answer is no, I took the photographs myself and I don’t have any photography training. here are some top tips:

1. You Don’t Have To Use A Really Expensive Camera

I did a lot of research on how to photograph jewellery and it can be challenging as you are dealing with reflecting, tiny products and you really want to show them at their best and as accurately as possible for the customer.

For my jewellery photography for my website, instead of using expensive camera equipment I used my smart phone – YES, a smartphone camera. I personally prefer Samsung for the quality of their smartphone cameras, as well as Android as I like multitasking between apps and picking my own level of customization. However, there are some great Smartphone Cameras right across the board that are serious contenders with some of the best digital cameras on the market.

2. You Need Good Lighting for Product Photography

I Used A Lightbox for Photographing Nisha Halo Jewellery

Product photography needs to take place in a room with plenty of natural light. I also used an LED photography lightbox that cost £13 - for jewellery photography a lightbox sized 9 inches by 9 inches is enough. You can buy larger light boxes for larger products and these are easily found on Amazon or Ebay. I initially attempted to build my own lightbox, but I could not get consistent lighting with the various bulbs I tried, but some people have been very successful building their own photography lightbox.

3. Think About Your Product Quality and Background

A White Background is Best for Website Product Photography

To prepare the products before photographing I spent a lot of time cleaning and polishing the jewellery pieces (the more perfect the product is, the less retouching later!) The majority of my jewellery pieces were photographed against a white background – this background displays the product clearly and your products are more likely to be approved for Google Shopping and other third party sales sites, if you intend to use these channels.

Photographing A Jewellery Model Against A Coloured Background

4. What About Photograph File Size and Quality?

The file size and dimensions of your images can certainly slow your website down if they are too large but you also need to have a large enough image size for a quality photograph.  I do not use image files less than 500KB for the best visual results and definitely no more than 20 MB - as anything more can slow the loading down of the website page. I also use images between 1500 and 2500 pixels wide (images smaller than 1500 pixels may appear blurry or pixelated when they stretch to fill larger ‘container spaces’ such as website banners). I never enlarge a small image as it can appear pixelated on the screen.

5. Retouching Images is Key

A Jewellery Model Image with an overlay from Photoshop Express

Retouching photographs can be time-consuming depending on the quality of the photograph (so always take plenty of photographs to choose from,) however, retouching is inexpensive - I used a free version of Photoshop Express to retouch the product images where necessary and brighten them up. With images of models, Photoshop Express is a saviour, you can edit out blemishes, add filters, change backgrounds, and add overlays for depth and interest.

6. Total Cost and Effort of Website Product Photography

A final edited shot of Nisha Halo packaging for my website

All in all, I spent £13 on the lightbox and a month in all - photographing the models and images for 85 pieces of jewellery, then retouching and uploading them to my website with alternative (alt) text for images, before launching Nisha Halo in July 2020.

I have just finished making my new jewellery products for the next season, so the photographic process is going to restart. Yes, there is always going to room for improvement when you start doing your own product photography but with practise you do get better and faster.  It is possible to photograph and edit your product images yourself, on a budget and with a smartphone camera, you just need time and patience.

See our jewellery here