You’ve spent the time to make sure that the way your business is presented is perfect. Perhaps you spent hours using a slogan generator to come up with the perfect slogan, days designing the perfect logo, and months putting together an attractive, well-functioning website. After all that, it’s important to make sure that the content you put out there is just as high-quality as everything else – especially your product photos. However, if you’re taking your product photos yourself, you might feel like it’s not o easy to get them to the quality you want.
Doing your photography in-house is a great way to save some money, build up a skill, and ensure that everything looks exactly how you want it. It can also be tricky, though, especially if you don’t have the right equipment, previous experience, or working knowledge of photography in general. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn and improve. If you’re doing your product photography on your own, here are some tips that will help you take it up a notch:
Plan Photos Sessions
While it’s possible to get good, candid photos, when it comes to product photography, it’s important to plan your photos. You may end up with a few great, unplanned shots, but overall, you need to know what you want before you get there or you’ll waste a lot of time and a lot of memory space on photos you’re not going to use. Whether you’ll be photographing a single product with a white background, or will be doing an entire shoot of a product line in use, planning the shoot will make a difference and help you be prepared to take the photos you want.
Get Good Lighting
Good lighting is the ultimate goal of every photographer – whether professional or a teenage girl taking a photo for Instagram. Unfortunately, good lighting isn’t always easy to find which can make getting good photos more difficult than it otherwise would be. Luckily, with the help of the right tools, you can create the good lighting you want on your own. To get high-quality product photos, you’ll need to invest in some lighting tools that will help illuminate the scene your shooting on, whether indoor, outdoor, plain, or textured, etc.
Use a Lightbox
A lightbox is a great tool for product photography if your products are relatively small and you plan to take photos on a plain background. Everything from basketballs and shoes to dishes and the food that will go on them can be photographed in a lightbox which will give you that isolated look and help you show off your product to your customers and potential customers.
Invest in a Photo Editor
Even if you don’t have experience in Photoshop, Lightroom, or another photo editor, it’s important to invest in one. You can use YouTube to learn all about how to properly use them and manipulate your photos to look how you want. The fact of the matter is that you can’t always snap a production-ready photo, so even if you won’t be making major edits or changes to colors and other aspects, it’s important to have a photo editor to make the changes you do need to make – no matter how minor.
Get Some Practice
If you’re doing the photography yourself and don’t have a lot of experience in the field, it’s a good idea to take your camera home with you, on vacation, to family dinners, etc. and use it to get some practice. The more familiar and comfortable you become with the camera, the better your pictures will get and the fewer “bad” ones you’ll have to sort through to find the ones you want to use.
Use a Tripod
A tripod is a great tool for product photography since it will help you hold the camera steady so that you can get a clean, crisp shot. There are all sorts of tripods that come in all different shapes and sizes. Whether you need a smaller tripod so that you can shoot up close or a full-sized tripod for wider shots that will be taken from farther away, investing in this tool can improve product photography and take it to the next level.
Final Thoughts
Your product photos can say a lot about your business. If they’re sub-par and low quality, they’ll be a major turn-off to customers and potential customers. Getting high-quality images isn’t as difficult as you might think, though, and you can even do it on your own. With the right tools and editing software, you can create stunning photos of your own to display on your website and in advertisements.
What made you decide to take your own product photos?