A Romantic Photoshoot for my New ETSY shop!

{photo shoot!}

Today I'm shooting my jewelry for my brand new Etsy shop!

 I've always sold my jewelry thorough galleries or at craft shows, but I've always wanted to be able to connect with the people who purchase jewelry online with both an Etsy shop and a shopping cart on my own website LorettaFontaine.com.  It's been a goal for a while now.

{Loretta Fontaine Amy reversible sterling silver earrings with Stuyvesant Fern miniature original photography}

In the past, most of my jewelry photoshoots involved a pure white background (see above!)

Magazine editors like the clean, white background because they have a lot of editorial freedom with page layouts. Photos with a white background are also ideal for my catalogs and line sheets. But I've noticed the photography on Etsy is all about MOOD, and using interesting bckgrounds to tell part of the story of the handmade products.

{Back to your nest when I am done!}

So I scoured the studio and house looking for "props", and since the Christmas decorations are still sitting in boxes in the basement waiting to be put away, I grabbed this little "nest" from a Christmas tree ornament I bought at the fabulous Experience and Creative Design in Schenectady. The adorable little bird it came with is letting me "borrow" his nest! Ha ha!

{the pottery we hold the kindling in was found at a yard sale in Vermont - LOVE it}

And then I grabbed for more "props" some of the twigs we use for kindling in our woodstove...

{my dining room table, inspired by Lauren Liess's Better Homes and Garden article}

Do you remember the post I did in 2010 with the Lauren Liess Pure Style Home inspired Holiday Lunch? I thought the green fabric I bought would be the perfect romantic backdrop for the Etsy photographs.

{I used the "reverse" of the fabric to lighten the mood...}

With fabric down, nest ornament in place and a few blue-painted blocks of wood I am ready to shoot photographs. Here's one necklace ready to go...

{penny and ruler}

One thing that is so hard to judge on sites like Etsy is scale - so I'm taking a photograph of each piece of jewelry next to a copper penny and a clear ruler in inches and centimeters. Not very romantic, but it will give people a great sense of the scale of the jewelry so there will be no "it's smaller than I thought!" or "it's much bigger then I thought!" when someone gets the jewelry in the mailbox.

(Yes, this has happened to me when I bought an adorable wooden puzzle on Etsy for my nephews and it was SO much smaller than I realized - even when they listed the dimensions.)

{Canon Macro Lens EF 100mm}

I'm using a lens with a very short focal range to make the backdrop of the photos blur into a gorgeous mix of greens, blues and rustic wood. Or, at least that's the lofty goal I have in my head! I choose jewelry that I thought would be perfect to give for upcoming Valentine's Day, and hope this "mood" I am trying to create works to set a romantic backdrop for the jewelry.

I'll share my new photographs soon! Any photography or Etsy hints of your own?
Loretta