Online world is dominated by images of products for sale. Every magazines, brochures, the web or advertisements you look, they all show products for sale. Products are photographed to entice the buyer to want the product. This makes product photography a huge business for photographers. But it is not as simple as just taking a picture of the product. Lots of thought, creativity, and photographic skill go into making a product look appealing to the buyer.
It is perfectly possible to shoot such great product photography on a shoe string budget and still achieve great results. Plenty of opportunity exists, to shoot great product shots of jewelry, electronics, glassware or cutlery. This is a great opportunity which is missed by many photographers till now.
There are lots of lighting techniques, tips, and tricks that you can use to create attractive images to help selling these products. Here are few tips to get you started in product photography.
- The key thing with product photography is to show as much detail as possible, and this means minimizing the amount of bright highlights or distracting shadows in the frame. For this you want soft, even lighting.
- The even lighting effectively recreates the sort of light you get outdoors on a cloudy day – the sort of day where it is difficult to pinpoint the position of the sun. Pay attention to shadows. Avoid harsh back lighting and other setups that cast shadows on the surface of the object. Keep the lights on the same side of the object as your camera, or slightly off to one side.
- By softening your light source, you will reduce strong shadows and hotspots.
- Most people spend their time trying to light the object, but they forget about lighting the backdrop, which can also improve quality. Lighting the backdrop will make it much easier to create that pure white effect and will allow you to spend less time editing your final images.
- A big fingerprint on your product or dust on your lens produce poor, amateur results. Buy some microfiber rags and wipe everything down carefully before shooting.
- Get White balance right in the camera, if it is an advertisement product photography. Use your white background or X-Rite ColorChecker Passport as a guide and make adjustments to the settings until it appears pure.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment. Be creative. You will make a few mistakes on your way to gaining a deeper understanding of the process.
There was a heavy demand on me to conduct product photography workshop in our photo critic forum. This led me to organize two back to back full day hands on practical workshop on product photography on 18th & 25th Jan 2015. 18th workshop is already full and 25th one is getting filled. You can check the details of this workshop on Facebook – Product Photography Workshop.