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For the longest time my OCD involved making white backgrounds for our pictures in photoshop. And this is when we were selling $10 items back in our dumpster diving ebay days. I just really wanted our store to have a consistent look. When we redid our whole business model one of the things I looked at was how we edited our pictures since that was taking up a disproportionate amount of time. The biggest issue was removing shadows which I found a solution for! I bought the cheapest shooting table I could find. I love it. It’s not perfect but it cut our photo editing down to almost nothing. Our photography set up is less than best but I have no desire to buy ideal lighting.
One annoying thing that comes up every blue moon (maybe 2 or 3 times in the last couple years) is when people insinuate that what’s in the pictures isn’t what we have on hand. A couple people made suspicious comments that maybe I was trying to sell something I didn’t own and was using a pictures from the internet or something so scam people. One guy even asked me to send a picture of the the actual jacket to make sure I really had it and wasn’t using a stock photo.
I know that 99% of the people just take pictures and post them. I agree, your photos are clear that is good enough.
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I think there is a perception issue on ebay that I compare to the issue of power vs. volume in cars, motorcycles, vacuums, etc. In that analogy, consumers assume a quiet vacuum, sports car, or motorcycle constitutes a lack of power. In reality, it is superior engineering to maintain power and reduce volume.
So back to your issue. Your photos in reality are amazing and professional, but your buyers are triggered to think the item is fake. I think the average ebay buyer expects to see some clue that the item is owned and loving used by the actual seller. They want good quality pictures, but in a “real” environment. By placing your used items in a sterile environment, it hits that uncanny valley that makes them appear to be fake listings. This is the main issue I have never been able to pull the trigger on a photo box.
If I were you , I would turn off the underneath lighting to go for a more natural, muted background. Yeah it will look a little less professional but that’s the point.
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I agree with Retro Treasures WV. I think the “naturalness” of most eBay photos is a plus. It’s okay if it’s not perfect, and in fact…its a plus.
When photos are too perfect or look to be floating on a white background, it feels unreal. Or a stock photo. I assume it’s a product made in China. A lot of images on Amazon are like this.
When I take photos of small, vintage items, I always take one shot of it in my hand. A lot of sellers hate to hold items or model the clothes, but I think it gives the items size scale which is important.
Most buyers just need to see a clear, well-light photo. I think the quality of the cheapest cameras have improved so much that the days of crappy, dim eBay photos is waning. (Though some buyers definitely do their best to take bad photos)
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What both of you are saying isn’t anything I hadn’t thought before but I need my ebay pictures too look the way they look. In short I would say my pictures need to be are clear & anonymous. zero personality.
My new etsy shop on the other hand has big goals for creating some really interesting lifestyle photography. I have a very specific vision for that.
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We are in the process of opening up an Etsy Store and because of that we have just started to shoot all of our items with “props”. We have a 20% neutral gray back drop with a thin wire zip line that we can pull various colored cloths across to give a textured and varied colored combination in the background. We combine that with items “props” such as floral bunches, wood, fruit, wine bottles and such. We are going to use these curated shots for both Ebay and Etsy. It only takes a few seconds to pull a prop or two out of the prop box under our photography table and we are good to go. We think these look much better than the stark white floating look.
As a disclaimer we have a fine print line in the description area of our Ebay listings that states all extraneous items other than the object described in the title are props and are photography purposes only and are not included with the purchase. mike in Atlanta
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I think they look great. Is the table material just semi-translucent plexiglass or plastic? I think the table dimensions look small for a lot of the large objects we shoot. We use a six foot table covered with white cloth and a white backdrop. We are listing a lot of government and fire dept. surplus items that are inherently dirty and they get the drops dirty. We bleach and wash them but it’s starting to become a pain.
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Never mind I found a site that sells them.
Look at this beauty, its 4% off right now.
http://www.adorama.com/orcp.html?RRref=productPage
Kinda crazy.
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