Proud Photography Blog

Auction sites are a great way to get a little financial boost just before Christmas and are also a good way to get rid of unwanted gifts.  We know now that having a good personal photo means you can sell your goods for the best price, but what rules do you need to stick to?

1.    Keep it in focus

If you have lots of items to sell you may rush though the photography quickly but it’s important you stick to your basic photography principles!  An out of focus, blurry shot helps no one, especially where detail is important.

Remember you want your product to look good – even if it isn’t an inspiring item, it fills the buyer with more confidence if they can see what it is they are actually buying.  Use flash if you need to (but watch the reflective areas)

2.    Photograph Details

Remember that the buyer may or may not know what they are buying. Some people know exactly what they want, but some people are just browsing for random things to buy so if they stumble towards your goods, they may not know the specifics.  Put as much information as possible in the description but also photo details like any bits of writing on the box – if its say, a beauty product, photograph the ingredients.

If it’s something of high value and has say, an authenticity tag, take a photo of it to prove it is what you say it is.  Use the macro function to make sure any texts or details is in focus because if it isn’t, it’s pointless to the buyer.

3.    Small File Sizes

Websites will not accept huge file sizes – certainly not (or very rarely) anything above 1MB. Ideally you want to get your files so there are about 50KB – 100KB (eBay recommends just 50KB).  As long as your image is in focus and evenly lit, don’t worry about any loss of quality due to file size, it will be good enough.  Compress the image but don’t reduce the actual canvas size of the image because we also want…

4.    Big Images

By big images, we are not talking about file size, we mean the canvas.  People have a habit of reducing files and cropping them.  People generally want to see an image that is large enough to pick out all the details and its disappointing when someone clicks on expand and the image is still tiny and no clearer.  In these cases, most people won’t ask you for a larger image they will just look elsewhere.

5.    Rotate

Sounds obvious but when you are selling 100 items you may forget to rotate the image the correct way round and eBay wont always do it for you.  Don’t expect people to crane their necks – just make sure the image is correctly rotated at the time of listing – you can do this before you upload but also after you load but it is worth making the effort.