What Does Sue Do?
We started the On This Day Blog mainly so our customers could get to know us. As consumers ourselves we like having personal relationships with the people we do business with. This blogging thing was one way we felt our customers could touch base with us and get to know who we are on that personal level. We are moms, wives, sisters and friends living busy, crazy lives and we want you all to have a small glimpse into our crazy. Do we feel these blog posts will change the world? No. But if they make you smile and occasionally go "hmmm" then we're good! (On an aside, can you name the group that sang "Things That Make You Go hmmm"? Yah, neither can I...)
For this blog post I'm going to take you behind the scenes on what I do at On This Day Designs. A couple of years ago I stepped away from making and designing jewelry to concentrate on other needs the company has. Every once in a while I may still design an item but for the most part I'm in the background silently (or not so silently) working. At a small company no one has just one job title so if you put all my titles together it may look something like this...Customer Contacting Human Resource Website Maintaining Marketing Photographer Person. Whew, I'm exhausted just writing that!
One of my main jobs is staff photographer. So all the photographs of the beautiful jewelry my sisters and sister-in-law make are taken by me. This is a job I have grown into and hopefully improved on over the years. When we needed to update our website we knew the photos were one of the most important changes needed to improve the site. We invested in a SLR camera and a macro lens. I was hoping I could just point and shoot like my old camera but no such luck. I actually had to learn how to operate the camera on manual mode, and become familiar with terms like white balance, shutter speed, ISO and f-stop. I spent countless hours reading about jewelry photography, studying techniques and coming up with some of my own. Who knew taking some pictures of jewelry could be so complicated...okay, maybe it's not rocket science but there is so much more to it than I ever thought before I had this job. I'm not always happy with how a photograph comes out-especially items with glass beads or silver chain, but I'm constantly trying to improve my floundering macro photography skills. So as I'm busily taking photos of our new items (due to be added to the site in the next couple weeks) let me know what you think of my efforts and any suggestions you may have for improving the pictures.
These are two photos of the Detailed and Elegant Cross Necklace-Can you pick which one was on our old site?
Setting the correct white balance on the camera is essential
They don't even look like the same bracelet!
FYI-don't ask me to take pictures of your family. I've somewhat figured out how to take decent pictures of small, shiny objects but put me out in the real world with a camera and it's a hot mess. I usually put the camera on auto mode and let the camera make the decisions, which I'm not always happy with. So when I finally find the extra time I never have, I plan on studying how to take wonderful everyday pictures. Then I'll gladly take as many pictures of your family as you want! Now if you need a photo of your great great aunt Madge's brooch to put on ebay, then I'm your girl!
Peace and joy,
Sue