In order to ensure that your item looks its absolute best in the online auction, it’s important that your pictures are the highest quality possible.
If you can afford a professional photographer, we highly recommend you use one. If not, take special care in preparing your photos.
You don’t need a studio or a fancy location to get a good photo. You can begin by simply using a space at home, such as a table placed by a window, along with a simple backdrop and utilizing a couple of lamps. You just need to think extremely creatively in order to capture your subject in an interesting and engaging way.
For some great ideas and examples, check out these interesting and creative images →
Here are 13 tips for composing and shooting high quality photos …
- Place the item you are donating in front of an uncluttered background.
- To shoot good looking photos, try to get out of the house whenever possible. Go into a field or the park where the lighting is so much better.
- Make sure the lighting is even.
- If you shoot indoors under fluorescent lights use a flash that compensates for the green tint that type of lighting will cast.
- Set the camera resolution as high as possible.
- Use flash judiciously. Natural light is best, so use it instead, if you can.
- Take advantage of the auto modes, e.g. macro mode, landscape modes, portrait mode in the camera… experiment and see what results you get.
- Pay attention to composition. A good rule is to apply the ‘rule of thirds’. This basically means that you should divide your shot into nine parts. Imagine a grid layered on top of your image — and there are two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines — this cuts up your photo into nine equal sections.
- Find an interesting angle. Don’t just whip out the camera and snap a photo without thinking if the perspective you’re using is creative or interesting.
- Depending on how you want to frame the photo will determine whether you shoot in portrait or landscape mode. Shoot your photos in one or the other, but not both.
- Make sure you get the focus right.
- Use a tripod or place your camera on a solid surface to keep it steady.
- Take lots of pictures so you get a good selection to choose from the best of the bunch.
If you submit photos that require color balance adjustments, a background removed or cleaned up, or extra retouching, it can take many hours to makes these corrections, so please be considerate of our web person’s time. Taking your images correctly in the first place will save time and result in better images online.
How to Send Us Your Images
Option #1 – Email
Send your photos to [email protected]
Option #2 – Cloud Storage
These applications now allow you to send photos to the “cloud”. It’s quick and easy to open a free account, and then once you’ve uploaded your photos to your account, all you need to do is send us a link to that cloud storage in an email. No more size limits or clogged inboxes.
Option #3 – Online Photo Sharing Sites
- Flickr. Flickr is the online photo behemoth with 26 million users and a solid platform
- 500 px. This photo sharing site looks gorgeous. You can even put a price tag and sell your photos online.
- Picasa. This site is older but still good with very nice features for photo storage.
Questions?
Drop us an email at [email protected]. We’ll be happy to help you!