PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG

A picture is worth a thousand words. Nowhere else is that more true than on eBay! For example, recently two cuckoo clocks sold on eBay. One had a nice clear picture. The other had a fuzzy picture with a dark contrasting background. The two clocks sold for vastly different prices. Can you guess which one sold for more money? Of course - the one with the nice picture! It sold for nearly double the price of the other clock. Which clock was the better clock? I’ll never know. All I know is the owner of the clock fetching the higher price had a much better picture!

Here are five ways you can improve your pictures and sell your goods at a much better price on eBay:

1) Use an uncluttered background.
I saw a picture of another cuckoo clock almost lost in its surroundings - with a small tree next to it and a wood grained panel on the other side. Below it was something that looked like a bat (no kidding!) hanging from the chains to this clock. I couldn’t tell what was on the clock face - since the clock was kind of in the distance. The seller of this clock could have improved the picture by moving the clock to a plain background! Set it on a white sheet or a white wall and take a picture of the clock - filling the picture frame with the clock. The seller is not selling the tree - is not selling the wood paneling - is not selling the “bat”-looking thing. So why even include them in the picture? Which takes me to way No.2 to improve your pictures.

2) Fill the picture frame with the product.
I don’t know why people are afraid to get up close to the product. Why hide it in the distance? People want to see it up close and personal! For example, they want to see the detail of the cuckoo clock. In a close-up shot of the clock (that filled the frame with the clock), I could see the figures (three men) who come out to dance when the clock “cuckoos”. I could clearly see the clock face. And I could see the detail of the wood grain. This clock was of superior craftsmanship - I could tell it from the picture! This was the clock that I would have purchased. And yes, I would have paid more money - because I could see it was a better quality product. Some of the other clock pictures didn’t show me this kind of detail! Buyers don’t like to gamble with their money. They want to be sure they’re getting something good! …. full article.

I love to shoot with wide and ultra-wide lenses. And I just love the Canon 15mm Fish Eye lens that I have. Its an amazing tool to stretch your photographic creativity. The barrelling and the huge depth of field of the fish eye lens often produce images which stand out from the rest.

This picture of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Tallest TWIN Towers in the world, is one of my favourite pictures shot with the Canon Fisheye.

There is an obvious convergence of the tops of the twin towers which is a characteristic of wide angle lenses. This “barrelling” effect is akin to the volksvagen car - you either love it or you hate it. But I’m sure you’ll agree that it is slightly “different” Twin Towers picture from the zillions of pictures which zillions of tourists have probably shot of this famous building.

When I posted this picture in POTY last year when POTY was DL (Digital Life), most people commented that I should debarrel the picture. Of course I didn’t debarrel it ! I wanted it to look like that. And I kinda liked it this way.

But lets say I did want to debarrel and remove the pin-cushion effect of a wide angle lens. How would I do it? …. see full article.

I’ll start by explaining where RAW format comes from.

All digital cameras take their original image in some kind of RAW format. RAW files are usually proprietary to the camera manufacturer and sometimes to the specific model of camera. That means, only the camera that takes the picture can understand the information collected on the camera sensors. That information is then translated by means of firmware (software) built into the camera and the usual result is a more user friendly format called JPEG. That is why most cameras produce images with an .jpg extension. JPEG is a compressed format (and has the ability of varying degrees of compression). JPEG has become a fairly universal digital standard for photo images.

What happens is that all digital cameras use firmware to apply various qualities to the RAW format before it is written to the memory card in JPEG form. The firmware in the camera will apply varying degrees of sharpening, varying degrees of saturation, varying degrees of contrast, etc. Most cameras have facilities to change these settings to the photographers liking. The only hint you have of what that photo will look like is the small LCD on your camera. This is usually too small to tell enough to make changes until it is too late. Often the photographer doesn’t want to mess with those changes on the field anyway. So you set your camera based on the last experience. Many people never experiment with changing these settings anyway…. see full article.