About Our Photography

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Above is a small peek of my own collection.

Hi!  I'm joe, the photographer / auction lister / webmaster for South American Imports.  I thought I'd create this section to talk about my photography a little.

I really pride myself on the photography, since I feel that when you're buying one of our natural works of art,  you want to know exactly how it looks.  I'm a collector, too (in fact, this whole auction / web thing was merely a ploy for me to be able to afford Dave's excellent crystals!), and realize that buying that special stone is not the same as buying a book, computer, or car -- each one is unique.  Of course, with e-commerce, there's no real way to know exactly how our products look and feel.  I hope that our pictures deliver the best possible representation of our items.

It's natural, especially for a business, to present their merchandise in the best possible manner.  We are no exception.  However, I do make the effort to photograph as much of each piece as possible.   Nonetheless, I try to photograph each stone in the best possible lighting (sometimes, I even do multiple photos in different light to give a better idea of how the piece actually looks).  I also photograph any flaws (if there are any, I make sure they are in at least one of the pics), but otherwise, I try to make each stone a masterpiece!  Since I'm a collector, I display all my pieces in the best possible way, so I like to present our minerals and crystals as they "should" be displayed.  Sometimes, we have an absolutely beautiful crystal that looks ordinary in an unlit room, but looks absolutely amazing out in the sun.  When this happens, I always mention it.  From time to time, a customer will remark that a piece looked better in the photo than what they received (but were still not disappointed!), although more often people tell us that what they received is better than the photos.

I use IrfanView to edit the photos, but never edit out flaws or artificially enhance them.  Usually the images are sharpened by ten points (which, if anything, brings out flaws that aren't even there -- a piece of hair on the crystal now becomes a scratch!) and the contrast is increased by five points.  However, at times more extreme editing is required to make the picture accurate (for example, if I photograph during sunset, I have to take a lot of red out of the pictures. or adjust the gamma on a cloudy day or even morning sun).  But the pictures are never artificially enhanced to make the stone appear "better than life."

On the other hand, a few of my nature photographs (please visit the wallpaper page) are "big-time" edited (using PhotoLine 32).  For example, I edit phone lines, telephone poles, aircraft, cars, etc. completely out of the picture.  Please click here for an example of this.  All of the photographs have been shot with either the Epson PhotoPC 800, the 850Z (in 1600 x 1200 compressed), and, since page 34, the Canon G1.  They have then been cropped and/or edited for display on the webpage.  I was impressed with my first photos, never having used a digicam, but now they look quaint (or stupid)!  Eventually, they'll be overwritten with new photos.  But, it's fun to see how my photography has progressed!

Anyway, if you even have any questions about anything (well, pertaining to the website, auctions, rocks, or photography!), please don't hesitate to ask!  Thanks for visiting South American Imports!