Pure White Backgrounds are mandatory for Successful Sales:

To begin we benefit from knowing that when it comes to jewelry and product photography that there are two primary types of images used. One is called the "Editorial Image", the other is the "POS Image"

Editorial images are what we see in magazines, colorful stylized backgrounds, mood, ambience, lifestyle, the values that makes us feel like to be part of all of that great life we must have what they're selling. An Editorial image is the bait, the lure that leads us to find out more and to visit the Seller's store and/or website.

POS images are Point of Sales Images. These are 98% of the time shot against a pure white background. But why?

In a word, "Trust".

The major retailers and online sellers are what they are because over many trial and error tribulations they narrowed the art of selling down to a science. While a designer would argue that pure white is boring, the businessman invested millions upon millions in research to arrive at a complete and truly functional understanding of what works and what does not work in each sales environment. For my money I would never bet against millions and millions of dollars that prove that a POS image must be against a pure white background?

While this may come across as simplistic, the fact of the matter is that all one need do is go shopping to prove the truth of it.

Think about your own purchasing habits, different from window shopping. You saw an enticing editorial image of a product and got hooked, so you go to their online store and there you see the handsome price that is perhaps a bit more than you'd expected, but if want to you could swing it. What decides you?

If at the point of purchase the image you see of the item is set against a dingy gray background you think, ahhh, "it's not what I thought it was" and a big part of you is relieved because now you don't have to think twice about not spending the money. Or if the image is in any other way defective, here again you take the easy out because it just does not live up to the editorial lure. So what's really happened here? The short answer is "Trust". You will not trust a Seller who does not show enough respect for themself or for you to present at the point of sale the item in a super clean no chance of deception image.

The smart money spent hundreds of millions to know for certain that there is one and only one right way... a pure white background, no distractions, no possible flaws camouflaged against a busy or otherwise non-pure-white background. Arguing against this is fallable business sense.

The reality is that most small businesspeople recognize the truth of pure white backgrounds, but the price professional studio photographers charge, it's scary high. And so it is that many smaller businesses settle for inferior images and against all odds hope for the best, but the odds will not be beaten.

So then what... time to go shopping for another way, another way they know nothing about, after all they are not professional photographers, and so they venture blindly into the mysterious cornucopia of cameras, lenses, lighting, props, light modifiers, software, an infinite variety of products all claiming to be "It". The camera store clerk determines your budget and directs you into a sale that pays him/her a fat commission, never mind that you walk out with a big hole in your wallet and a shopping cart full of expensive equipment you don't know how to use, or alternately, a cheap table top gizmos or a not so cheap light box that no pro photographer in his/her right mind would ever pay so much as one red cent for.

It isn't long before you realize that you've been had. To add insult to injury, you still have to solve the white background photography challenge.

No matter how much you spend, a little or a lot, the purchase price is false. The real price is "Cost of Ownership". Does the photography solution do what you need it to do, and does it do it fast? Because one, if it doesn't do what you need it to do, you lose, and two; if does do what you need it to do but it cost an arm and a leg in time, you lose. The photographic solution for any business must perform as needed to produce both high quality and the lowest labor cost possible, in other word one must invest in only the Cost of Ownership that makes you a winner. The only Photography Solution that does this for product and jewelry is FlashBox.