Product Photography Tips – The How To’s

This week is all about product photography tips – the how to’s to up your photos’ quality. Why only product photography? Because this is how you show up in a virtual world.  

When you sell online, photos are the first time your customers see your work. Applying to fairs, it is also the first time the judges will see your work. Creating high-quality images is essential. It is your first chance to make a great first impression in a crowded world.  

A suggestion – bookmark this page and return when you have time or want to learn a few tips on product photography.

Here are videos going through product photography tips – how to’s:

DIY Product Photos – Easy, Cheap and Good-looking –  

By Luke Ayer. A quick video tutorial is walking you through the steps of setting up a home product shoot. What to use to create your “studio” and how to change your lighting to highlight your product

Shooting a Nike Advertisement in my Living Room! 

A quick product video by Tyler Babin. He walks through setting up a product shoot using a shoe. Then he walks through his post-process using Lightroom and Photoshop. What is important here is creating a process to set up your products and shoot photos of them.  

Easy Trick for Product Photography

This is a quick two-minute video by Peter McKinnon.  In this video will give you a few quick tips on creating higher quality product photos.  (If you don’t know who Peter is, you should look at his YouTube account or his Instagram account. He produces great content.)

Product Photography

In this longer video Peter McKinnon. Peter goes through his process of setting up his product shoot. Creating a theme, making sure he has props that support it, lighting, and editing the photos.

Epic Product Photography 

This is the second video in his product photography series. A bit longer than the prior one. Continuing with the theme for your shoots and finding things with complement and set off your product. This video he goes through a little bit of his post process to get his photos to look just the way he wants them.  His photos are pretty stylized.  This may not be your style, but it is interesting to see how he creates his images.

To review the product photography tips – the how to’s

We looked at five videos. Watching all five of these videos will take about an hour.  They will teach you to take better product photography images with nothing more than what you have in your home. 

You learned how to style your shoots, use a theme, use light, and do a little bit of processing after you shoot to get your photos ready to be used.

You may have noticed Tyler reused his setup from a portrait shoot to photography his “Nike ad.” This is a great tip, shoot multiple items once you have your set ready.  Shoot all of your jewelry, ceramics, soap, etc. at once. Reusing your photo set will save you time—something which is precious.

It will also give your photos a cohesiveness across your website and social media.  

You can go down a rabbit hole of “how to’s” when it comes to product photography. But for now, learn a little and then practice. Today, we learned you don’t have to have all of the fancy equipment to make our photos more appealing, we can use what we have.

A caution – don’t compare yourself to the professionals!

These videos were all done by professional photographers. They have put in years of work to get their photos to look this way. Please don’t compare your photos to theirs. Use their experience and suggestions to make your images better.

After looking through these, which were the most useful? Do you have other product photography tips that you would like to share with the community? 

If you are interested in other types of resources, we have started a weekly series to give you creative resources for your business.  You can check out last week’s resources here or scroll through other posts to see what else we have covered.

Just for fun product photo review –

Looking at image used for this post, what is wrong with it as a product photo? Do you think a potential customer would look at the image and think they should buy something? Why or why not? How would you place the mug to sell it?

 

If you would like to become a part of our growing community, you can join here.

 

2 Replies to “Product Photography Tips – The How To’s”

  1. The review – First, the photo will only work seasonally for the fall. If this is a product there is only one of, and will sell out in the fall, that is ok. Otherwise, the photo will date when the product was created. Second, the product is hard to see.

  2. I just placed over $650 worth of Canon Powershot G7 X Mark II in my cart and said, Give it one more chance to do that cheaply for a decent message. And here you are! This is exactly what I have been looking for. Thanks!

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