How to Add Photos to Your Pottery Journal
A pottery photo in your camera roll is a souvenir. A pottery photo on the craft is evidence: this weight, this glaze stack, this result.
Claybook stores photos on the project so they travel with clay, steps, and surfaces. You can shoot in the studio or pick from the camera roll later.
For lighting and angles that stay useful, read Photographing Your Pottery Well.
How to attach photos
- Open the craft (new or existing)
- Under Photos, tap Add photos (or Add more photos if some are already there)
- Choose camera or photo library
- Add as many shots as you need
- Save the craft
Photos live on that record. They are not a separate gallery you have to cross-reference.
What to shoot at each stage
You do not need a photoshoot. You need the pictures that answer questions later.
Wet / just thrown. One side profile on the bat. This is the form. Overhead hero shots can wait.
Leather hard. Foot and handle if those are the point of the piece.
Raw glaze. Only if the layers will be hard to reconstruct from notes (similar colors, wax resist).
Fired. One consistent-light profile plus a detail of the surface. Same angle as the wet shot if you want a before-and-after.
A set of four mugs does not need four lighting setups. Photograph the hero well, then shoot siblings in the same spot so you can compare rims.
Reorder and feature
The first photo is the one you will see on the library card and on a share card.
Drag to reorder if the fired shot should lead and the wet shot should sit behind it. Keep the wet profile. Do not delete the only evidence of how it started.
Camera roll vs in-app camera
Use the camera when your hands are merely dusty and the pot is in decent light.
Use the library when you already shot a grid on your phone, or when a friend photographed the firing.
Either way, get the files onto the craft the same day if you can. A folder called “kiln” on your phone is how photos detach from recipes.
Sets and clones
Clone copies photos onto the new records. That is handy if every mug should start with the same wet reference. It is messy if the hero’s fired beauty shot now sits on three unfinished siblings.
After you clone, replace or add photos on each copy as those pieces finish. Guide: How to Clone a Pottery Record for Matching Sets.
Sharing a piece
From the craft, tap Share. Claybook builds a card from the featured photo plus the details you choose (clay, steps, surfaces, notes). Toggle sections off if you do not want glaze recipes on Instagram.
A share card with no photo still works, but the picture is usually why someone asks for the recipe. Put a decent fired shot first, then share.
Common mistakes
- Only angled beauty shots, no straight profile
- Leaving fired photos in the camera roll “to add later”
- Using a different backdrop every time, so you cannot compare glaze
- Cropping out the foot, then wondering about trim
- Logging a new craft for the fired photo instead of adding it to the existing record
One pot, one record, photos from wet through fired.
Takeaway
Shoot a straight profile when the clay is wet. Add the fired shot to the same craft. Reorder so the library shows the result. The journal is the album and the recipe in the same place.