How To Photograph Your Items To Sell On EBay

Digital Photography and Ebay; there are a few things you must know. When selling items successfully on Ebay becoming good at digital photography is a must. And the first point of call starts with the photograph. The first thing to remember that digital photography done right can pave the way to more bids, higher bids and repeat purchases. It’s all in the digital photography.

Too many times you will see an item not getting many (if any) bids. If you look closely at the digital photograph, you will see the digital photo is very poor. When I say “poor” I mean often too dark, has a contradicting background, and too many distracting, irrelevant items around it.

Let’s take for example the lounge suite. I have seen two types of “lounge suite” photos, and they both get a small amount of bids. (A small amount of bids usually means not enough interested buyers to push the bid price up- hence not enough money is received by the seller. When all they had to do was get their digital photography right in the first place.)

The first type of digital photo I have seen is one of ‘irrelevant background’. The lounge suite is carted outside and placed on the lawn and photographed outside. One of the secrets to getting excellent digital photographs is your background. The number one rule in this instance is to create some relevancy and consistency between the main subject and the background. People don’t sit outside on the lawn in their lounge suites. Your digital photo of your lounge suite will create much more interest if its places in the background environment is relevant- ie the lounge room.

The second type of digital photo is too dark- only using the flash indoors. What’s wrong with turning the light on to get light onto the sides of the lounge suite? The flash will only light up the very front of the lounge, not cast a beautiful even light over the sides too. Its important in digital photography to be very conscious of light, and lighting up the WHOLE photo, not just the front of it.

The third type of digital photo is one where other things are in the photo. These “other things” have nothing to do with creating a better look and feel for the lounge suite. These items are distracting and irrelevant. One killer to a good digital photo is having something in the back ground, or foreground, that has absolutely nothing at all to do with the main subject, i.e. a painting hanging on the wall behind the lounge suite.

Digital photos like this will often attract questions from potential bidders “does that painting come with the lounge suite?” To which the seller gets annoyed and says “no, lounge suite only.” To which the potential bidder thinks “well why the heck is it in the photo?”

Good point. Why IS that painting in the photo?

So remember, keep your Ebay item well lit, keep your backgrounds relevant and keep your distraction to a bare minimum. Once you apply these few things you will be well on your way to creating sensational digital photography for Ebay.

Best wishes,

Amy Renfrey

If you want to learn how to take sensational digital photography go to www.digitalphotographysuccess.com