Handmade Wood Signs: Photography and Staging

I'm working on replenishing my inventory of barn wood signs. The signs are relatively quick and easy to make. They also sell quite well, too. Actually the signs pretty much sell themselves, but I like to take photos for social media and advertising. Today I will walk through how my process for staging one of my signs evolved. There's a link at the end of this post for a tutorial on making the signs.

By itself the sign looks too stark, so I put together a quick vignette. I didn't like the overall set-up because the display looks too cluttered, and the items I used don't provide the right scale for the sign. As a point of reference the louvered doors are about 7 feet tall. But I need to use at least one door to hang the sign on as I don't want to put a random nail hole in my wall.

I added a chair to give the viewer a better frame of reference for the scale.

The tall doors are throwing off the scale, so next I cropped out the top of the doors to improve the scale.

I also tried shooting from an angle for a different perspective.

To provide even more focus on the sign, I changed the photo to black and white except for the sign itself. I added a simple frame to further highlight the subject of my photo.

As I finish making more signs I will add them to my staging vignette to see if grouping them together will give me the winning shot.

(Side note: you can see my tutorial for making barn wood signs HERE. The finished signs at the end of the post aren't staged, and I think you'll agree that they are too plain. It's a good example of why it's important to get the staging right. Live and learn.)

One last note, the colors of this sign are painted in Greek Blue, Napoleonic Blue, and Old White. The doors in the background are painted French Linen. The chair is Duck Egg blue.