5 Photography Tips to Distinguish Your Products

From Instagram to Pinterest, society is becoming more visual, and eCommerce is leading the way. In fact, customers often perceive the value of your products and the trustworthiness of your business by the images on your website and social media channels.

High-quality, beautiful photography that showcases your products can be the difference between a conversion and no sale at all. Images matter even more when your products are distributed in marketplaces like Amazon, where they will appear beside those of your competitors.

Here are five tips that will show your products in the best light, attracting both shoppers and sales.

1. Lighting

Lighting is the most important element to get right, so you’ll want to pay plenty of attention to this tip. If you’re just starting out with photography, using natural light (i.e., the sun) is a good bet. Natural light is accurate, readily available, predictable, and relatively easy to work with. You will need a diffuser to soften the sun light or use neutral density filters to help dial back the brightness that it naturally provides. Also, outdoor settings are often a beautiful way to show off certain products.

You can also use flashes and constant lighting, such as professional photo lights. However, you have to control harsh light and high contrast shadows by using softboxes or other light modifiers. This option may become more costly and would require a bit more know-how, but it provides an added level of control and professionalism.

Regardless of the light source, you’ll want to experiment to get the very best lighting on your products. Try different lighting scenarios to achieve the effect you’re after. There are tons of out of the box lighting kits just for products that would help you eliminate the guesswork. However, you would still need to invest some time learning how to use your camera settings with artificial lighting equipment to achieve the best possible outcome.

2. Staging

Staging is another area where experimentation plays an important role – and it’s fun, too!

Including other objects can provide context for your products, as well as give your photos an extra layer of visual interest. Staging can also show buyers how your products are used, as well as the scale of the items.

Clothes are the obvious candidates for staging, but products like smartphones, glassware, and beauty items all lend themselves to creative staging, too. Just be sure the other objects in the photo do not detract from your products.

3. Angles

Similar to staging, showing your products from different angles will give customers better insight into their uses and design. If you sell online exclusively, customers won’t be able to physically touch or handle your products, so you’ll want to give them the richest visual experience possible.

Take shots from every angle you think would help a customer envision using your products. Don’t forget to include close-up shots. People love to see the little details and textures that make your product unique. Showing shoppers as much as possible about your items will help eliminate any questions or uncertainty before they buy.

4. Background

The background you choose will depend on the effect you are going for. Some people prefer a no-frills background that’s all-white or all-black. This clean, simple, and straightforward look may be a smart choice for technology products, for example.

However, the background can play a major role in the staging of your products if you want to get creative. You can shoot “on location” so customers can visualize the product as they’d use it.

Different backgrounds may present challenges you’ll have to consider, such as weather elements or lighting obstacles. Remember to keep the background tidy and remove distracting objects that may draw attention away from your product.

5. Editing

Even if you’ve got an eye for photography, most of your images will need a little cleaning up. Photo-editing programs like Lightroom, Aperture, CameraRaw, and Photoshop can help you fix minor or major issues so your photos will look sleek. Make sure to shoot your photos in RAW format so that you can edit them without affecting the overall quality.
Here are some tweaks you may need:

• Cropping can straighten out or tighten up images you may have not framed well the first time.
• Exposure editing can correct photos that are too dark (under-exposed) or too light (over-exposed). A light touch will give the best results on the exposure slider.
• Retouching can help you remove spots or smudges that show up in your photos. This tool is fun to play with, so practice away before you retouch your product shots.

Photography can be fun, but when it comes to your products, you may want to leave it to the pros. Marstudio’s team of professional photographers carefully choreograph your product photo shoots for a crisp, consistent look throughout your entire line of products. We are equipped to conduct on-location or in-studio product photo shoots and our expert photographers work to ensure perfect shots every time. Visit our Photography gallery to view a great selection of our work.