Last week I spent two days at a photo shoot for an upcoming jewelry book I'm editing. We spent some time fussing with the bracelets. Some bracelets we photographed standing up and clasped; some were photographed flat and stretched across the page. Different bracelets looked better one way or the other.
The experience reminded me of a recent bracelet I made and photographed. I designed this Mirror, Mirror bracelet on the Michaels website. It's a great piece for a fancy party—lots of sparkle and easy to customize with your own colors. It occurred to me that the best photo partly depends upon your audience.
If I were selling this bracelet, I'd probably use this photo:
The circle shape of the bracelet gives the customer a good idea of what the bracelet looks like when worn. This photo makes me want to slip this bracelet on my wrist.
But if I were teaching this project (or sharing how-to directions in a magazine or on a website), I'd probably use this photo:
Here the photo becomes a teaching tool as much as the written instructions. You can see how all the beads are connected to one another and the order they were strung. This project is fairly simple, so you probably could get the same idea from the first photo, but I've seen many how-to project photos where the complicated part of the instructions isn't shown in the photo. That drives me crazy! This photo makes me want to buy beads and make something.
How do you photograph your bracelets?