Photographing your craft for online sales

Your photographs are your shopfront

When someone finds your work online, they cannot pick it up, turn it over, or run a thumb along the grain. Everything they know about your craft arrives through a rectangle of screen. That makes photography not a marketing extra but part of the making itself — the final stage where a well-finished piece meets its buyer.

The good news is that you do not need a studio or an expensive camera to do this well. You need decent light, a plain background, a steady hand, and the patience to shoot more frames than you think you need. A modern phone camera, used thoughtfully, will outperform a fancy camera used carelessly every time.

Light: soft, indirect, and never from a flash

Light is the single biggest difference between amateur and professional-looking product photos, and it is free. Your aim is soft, even, diffused light that reveals texture without blowing out highlights.

• Use a north-facing window. In the UK, north light is consistent, cool and gentle, with no harsh sun streaking across your work. A north-facing windowsill or table is the closest thing to a free studio you will ever get.
• Shoot within two hours of the light being at its best. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when the sun is not directly hitting the glass, are reliable windows. Overcast days are wonderful, not a write-off.
• Diffuse direct sun. If light is streaming in, tape a sheet of white baking parchment or a thin white cotton sheet across the window. This softens shadows and removes the hard-edged glare that makes wood look plasticky.
• Bounce light back in. A piece of white foam board or card placed opposite the window fills the shadow side of your item. This is the cheapest upgrade to your photos you will ever make.
• Turn the flash off. Always. On-camera flash flattens texture, creates ugly hotspots and casts a hard shadow behind the object. If you are shooting in the evening, wait until tomorrow rather than reaching for flash.

Backgrounds that flatter rather than compete

Your background should never be the most interesting thing in the frame. It should quietly support the piece and let the material speak.

• Match the mood to the material. A pale linen cloth or white painted board suits delicate jewellery and ceramics. Bare, sanded birch ply or a slate tile lifts darker woods and metalwork.
• Avoid pure brilliant white unless you know what you are doing. It often reads as cold and clinical and makes cream and pale timber look dingy by comparison. Off-white, oatmeal and warm grey are kinder.
• Keep it clean and crease-free. Iron your backdrop. Dust it with a lint roller. Small distractions — a stray thread, a fingerprint on a glass jar — are magnified on a phone screen.
• Use props sparingly. One or two items that suggest scale or use are helpful: a sprig of dried lavender beside a bowl, a folded tea towel under a chopping board. Three or more and you are photographing a still life instead of a product.

Angles: show the whole, then show the detail

Buyers want to understand shape, scale and craftsmanship, in that order. Plan a small set of shots for every listing.

• Straight on. Eye-level, item centred. This is your main image, and its job is to be instantly readable as a thumbnail.
• Three-quarter view. Turn the piece roughly 45 degrees so the front and one side are visible. This gives a sense of depth that a flat-on shot cannot.
• Slightly above. A gentle downward angle works well for flat items — coasters, prints, chopping boards — and shows surface finish clearly, including any figure in the grain.
• Macro detail. Get close on the joinery, the dovetail, the glaze pooling in a rim, the hand-stitched seam. This is where you prove that the work is handmade and well made.
• Scale shot. Include a hand, a coin or a familiar object to show size. Buyers misjudge scale constantly, and a returned item because it was smaller than expected costs you far more than one extra photograph.
• Avoid weird angles. Dutch tilts and extreme close-ups of nothing do not help anyone. Keep the camera level and honest.

The kit worth owning (and what to skip)

Resist the urge to buy a lighting kit before you have mastered daylight. Start with what you have and add only what solves a real problem.

• A phone with a decent camera. Use the main lens, not digital zoom. Step back and crop later.
• A small tripod or phone clamp. Essential for sharp shots in soft light, and for shooting your own hands at work.
• White foam board, two sheets. One as a reflector, one as a clean backdrop.
• Baking parchment or a white sheet. Your diffuser for bright days.
• A simple editing app. Crop, straighten, nudge exposure, warm or cool the white balance, and export at a consistent size. Keep edits light — accuracy sells, filters mislead and lead to returns.

Building a repeatable routine

The crafters who photograph well are not the ones with the best gear; they are the ones with a routine. Set aside one morning a fortnight, batch your shooting, and keep a dedicated corner where the board and diffuser live ready to go.

Before you list anything, check each image against a simple test: is it sharp, is it level, is the light soft, is the background clean, and does it tell the buyer something they could not have guessed? If the answer is yes across the board, your photographs are doing the same job your tools do — turning good work into work that sells.