5 Tips to Optimise Your Product Photography

Great product photos boosts discoverability, website/shop traffic, engagement and sharing - which is guaranteed to result in more sales for you.                                                                      

It might be a bold statement but it’s true. I’ve seen sales successes in my clients’ businesses, and they tell me it’s because of the quality of their product photos.

Afterall, product photos have a really important role, they need to replace that in-person experience. So, in real life, where people can browse and touch to get a feeling about a product, we must deliver that feeling within an image.

So, image quality is crucial, but then there’s your brand style to consider too.

When we get these two things right, they will help us to attract the RIGHT people. Those who will understand your brand values and become loyal customers.

I’d always recommended to go to a professional product photographer of course, but I get that sometimes you might want to have a go yourself, especially if you’re just starting out. So, if you’ve already had a go at some of your own product photography, taken some shots and they just aren’t working out as you want, then try to identity what it is that isn’t quite right.

Here’s my checklist to help you troubleshoot your product photography. 

Lighting

One of the main things that can really make your product look bad is the lighting that you use. The product should always be well lit, resulting in a clean, bright image.  It may sound obvious, but I’ve seen lots of people trying to sell products using flat, dull images and it doesn’t look good.

Window light can work very well – check out some of your rooms to see which has the nicest quality light and at what time of day it’s at its best. You may need to use an editing app to boost the image afterwards as cameras often get it wrong.

Colours

Make sure the colours are accurate. Again, good daylight can help with this. However, if you are taking a photo at different times of the day, you might notice the colours look different on your images. Try to take a batch of product photos in the same place, at the same time of day for consistent lighting results, and avoid room lighting such as fluorescent or ceiling lights. Editing the images afterwards can help get rid of dodgy colour casts. 

Background

Review the background that you are using. Have you just grabbed something that looked pretty, or have you given some thought about whether the background looks good for your brand and compliments the product? Does the style and colour work?

Does the background compete for attention, or does it allow your product to have centre stage?

Props & Styling

Picking a set of props that you can use with your products is a brilliant way to decorate your image; and the props you use can help you to communicate your brand style, or perhaps you can show off some tools of the trade.

Props are also useful to show the size of the product. So, if your product is a journal, you might show a pen next to it, so people know how big the journal is.

However, like I mentioned with the backgrounds that we don’t want the product to have to compete for attention, so when it comes to props, less is more, don’t overdo them as the image can become cluttered and confusing.

Consistency

Think about some of your favourite brand websites and other product sellers on shopping sites. If the listings look neat and have a consistent quality look to them, then we are more likely to think of them as professional. When a business looks professional, it encourages us to trust, and when we trust we tend to be more likely to buy.

So, ways to be consistent (other than the aforementioned) are to position your products uniformly or similarly and crop the images to be the same size. Also make sure to take a variety of images, from different angles and shoeing off different details.

One last thing, don’t forget to name your images according to what they are, rather than a random file number, and include your business name. This will help the SEO and discoverability.

Product photography can be tricky and time consuming so don’t be too hard on yourself if it’s not looking how you hoped. That’s why I’m here to help with professional photography service should you need it. 

Rachel

RJM Photography

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