Listing can be done at anytime, but I have come to believe it is a process which I think a person has to be in exactly the right sort of mood to do with creativity and playfulness.
Taking pictures of beads is a lot easier than the setup pottery takes. With pottery I have to dig out the light tent, and set up the lights. I have to make certain it is sunny outside to take advantage of the small amount of light that does come through the window. However, with beads I simply switch on the light and clamp it to the bottom of my tv stand. I put several pieces of white typing paper on the floor, sit crosslegged resting my elbows on my knees, and snap away.
I usually take 8-10 shots of each bead set I am planning on on listing and I try to shoot at least 10-15 listings at a time. I end up using 5-8 of those listings because there are times the macro camera picks up small defects I don't see with my naked eye. I love my camera! At those times I pick out the bad bead and reshoot at a later time or there have been times I've included the offending bead, but said in the listing that it was free because of the defect. I don't think I've ever sold any sets with a free defect bead, so on my huge list of things to do is to reshoot those beads and rewrite the listing. (Update, the day this was posted I did sell this listing with a defect freebie bead: http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=12424863 Boy was I was surprised!
Other times I end up having what I call a fantasy bead (see above photo). The bead comes out much better in the photo than it looks in real life. That wouldn't be fair to a customer who was expecting a bead with all those colors. There have been beads that when taken out into sunlight looked exactly like the photo, so that's what I write in the listing. There have been times that the bead looked better in real life than in the photo. What to do? Reshoot. I do a lot of reshooting. I still have a lot to learn with basic photography but my goal is to take clear (not blurry) photos and portray accurately each bead in the best light possible without having the 'fantasy bead' effect. The bead in this photo shows up the pink blotches much more than the actual bead. It's a beautiful bead BUT if someone bought this bead they would be disappointed. So rather than create any more of them (I have four), I will use these four as Thank You gifts.
The listing itself is a different process. Every so often my mind works creatively and I think I write an interesting to read listing. But I have found that if my mind is BLAH that it is better to have a dry listing than something that is just trying to be funny. I can't force funny nor can I force creativity. When I occasionally have a witty listing, I suppose instead of listing I should be in the studio creating. Just a thought anyway.
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