Ceramic Product Photography

How it works

1. 1. Photograph the piece

   Side-on at rim height, on a plain surface. Rotate to the side you want the buyer to see first.

2. 2. Pick a surface and light

   Raking side light reads glaze depth. Flat overhead light does not.

3. 3. Generate and download

   One free watermarked image; an account gives you clean full-resolution files.

Why this is worth getting right

A glaze is the reason someone buys a piece of pottery and it is almost impossible to photograph badly-lit. Glaze depth is an optical effect — light enters the glassy layer, scatters off the clay body underneath and comes back out — which means it only appears when light travels across the surface at an angle. Photographed flat from the front, a celadon and a cheap gloss white look identical, and every variegation, break and pooling effect that took you three firings to get vanishes. Raking side light is not a stylistic preference here, it is the only way the information gets into the file. The second issue is the opposite problem: a high-gloss glaze is a mirror, and a mirror photographed against a window shows the window. On a curved form that reflection wraps and stretches, so a bright rectangle becomes a bright band across the belly of the pot that no shopper reads as intentional. Third, and this is what distinguishes handmade from production ware commercially: throw lines. The spiral ridges left by the potter’s fingers are the proof of hand-throwing, they are shallow, and they are the first thing lost to a soft-focus phone photo or an aggressive denoise. If your listing says hand-thrown and the photo shows a mechanically smooth wall, you have undercut your own price. Fourth is the foot and the rim. Buyers of functional ware check the rim for chips and the foot for whether it is glazed or raw — a raw foot is normal and expected on stoneware, but only if it is visible enough to read as a deliberate finish rather than a flaw.

Tips that actually help

• Light across the surface, not at it. Glaze depth is an angular effect and a front-lit pot loses every variegation you spent firings developing.
• Diffuse everything on a gloss glaze. A bare window reflected across a curved belly becomes a bright band that reads as a blown highlight rather than a highlight.
• Shoot sharp enough to resolve throw lines. They are shallow, and losing them means your hand-thrown listing is illustrated with a photo of something that looks slip-cast.
• Include the rim in profile. Functional ware buyers check rims for chips, and a rim cropped out reads as a rim being hidden.
• Show a raw or waxed foot deliberately rather than cropping it. On stoneware an unglazed foot is a correct finish, but only when it is clearly shown.

Who uses this

Studio potters

A kiln load is thirty one-off pieces, none of which can be re-shot once sold. One photo each in the same setup gives the whole load a consistent gallery.

Glaze test documentation

Recording glaze results needs consistent lighting more than it needs beauty. The same scene across every test tile makes results actually comparable.

Craft-fair follow-up sales

Pieces photographed on a market table sell badly online. Re-scening the same photo onto a clean pedestal recovers the listing.

Gallery and stockist submissions

Galleries want the form isolated and the glaze legible. A pedestal scene with raking light delivers both from a phone photo.

Domande frequenti

Will the glaze variegation survive?

It survives if it is in your source. Glaze depth only appears under raking light, so a front-lit photo has no variegation in it and there is nothing for the tool to preserve.

How do I stop the pot reflecting my window?

Diffuse the light source. Gloss glaze is a mirror, and on a curved wall a window reflection stretches into a band across the whole piece.

Do throw lines stay visible?

Yes, provided the source resolves them. They are shallow features, so avoid heavy phone denoise and shoot with enough light to keep the shutter fast.

Is my piece redrawn or kept?

Kept. The pot in the output is your photographed pot composited into a generated scene, so the form and glaze are your pixels, not an interpretation of them.

Should I show the unglazed foot?

Yes, if it is a deliberate finish. Cropping it out makes buyers assume something is being hidden; showing it reads as confidence.

Can I photograph a set together?

You can, but individual shots re-composited give you more flexibility, since sets change and re-shooting the whole group each time is wasteful.

Does it work for matte glazes?

Yes, and matte is more forgiving on reflections. It still needs raking light, since matte glazes carry their interest in surface texture rather than gloss.

What is included free?

One watermarked 1024px image per day. An account gives you 20 credits and clean, full-resolution, commercially licensed files.

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