It often seems like I spend more time taking photos of jewelry than actually making jewelry.

While this may not be true, running a business online does mean shooting, and reshooting, a lot of pictures.

I’ve gotten better at taking photos, but sometimes after a shoot, I’m left with nothing more eye-catching than this:

These are pretty earrings – green garnets dangling from one of my favorite handmade earwire styles – and you can tell they are pretty if you look closely at the photo.

But I only have a second to grab the attention of potential customers. So I did a re-shoot. Much more eye-catching, don’t you think:

Now, this picture isn’t going to win any photo contests – but I think it does a much better job of grabbing someone’s attention than the first one. The first photo is still in the listing in my etsy shop, but the new one is what people see when browsing – it’s the image that will hopefully make them want to look closer.