Photoshop and jewellery
Many people don’t like Instagram and its obsession with perfect visuals and while I have my questions, I felt rather untouched by the world of influencers with perfect bodies, homes, holidays… you name it. The vast majority of accounts I follow on Instagram are artists and makers who mainly share the products they create, instead of perfect homes, they show their messy studios and the body image is often reduced to dirty hands. In this sense, Instagram is a brilliant medium that allows us to connect and follow each other’s work.
However, I had a bit of a wake-up call last week that I would like to share with you. I’ve been following one jewellery brand for years as I like what they make even though it is not my personal taste. I enjoy the craftsmanship they put into their pieces and love their videos of process making. A few years ago, this brand started making jewellery with a very unique and in my opinion beautiful finish. I was scratching my head every time I saw one of their pieces on Instagram trying to figure out how it was done.
Fast forward to the last week, by accident, I walked into a shop that had this brand and those particular pieces for sale and I had the opportunity to see it in real life. Perhaps not surprisingly, seeing the jewellery from close, I realised there was nothing that mysterious about how they achieved their finish. I can do it too, except I didn’t like it as much in its physical form as in their pictures. And then it clicked. The texture I loved was achieved by a very skilled photographer, using perfect lightning and surely in postproduction as well. A thought that hit me very hard was that I was comparing myself and trying to achieve something I saw on Instagram without realising it wasn’t real.
It brought it home for me that while I wasn’t comparing my face, body, my home, my holidays et cetera, I was comparing my skills and products feeling inferior without knowing about it. Now, don’t take me wrong, there is a wealth of wisdom and skill in jewellery-making, that I still plan to learn, there are masters of the trade that are magicians to me and I love to admire their work. But in this particular case, it was entirely unfounded.
I wonder how many artists and makers are out there, who feel their work is less than, while it is actually the photography and overall presentation that makes the difference on social media.
It also revived my never-ending dilemma of how to best edit jewellery pictures. I try to correct as little as possible making it as true to reality as I can, but in the world of online sales where good photos sell, is it the best strategy? And, is it ethical to consciously improve your products in Photoshop for promotion and sales? Is it ethical not to? Do you have any thoughts?