I’m currently working on two AWESOME photography guides – one about product photography and another on taking perfect photographs. While I’ve been working on these guides for some time, I’ve decided to write up a quick mini guide on how to get the perfect product photograph for your website or online store!

There are four main elements that comprise a successful product photograph:

• Composition
• Soft lighting
• Exposure
• Editing

Composition

One of the most important elements of product photography. Potential customers need to have a clear idea of the product, so it’s a good idea to provide your customers with a range of photographs of the item.  For example, Jewelry products could be photographed in full; close up for detail; modeled on a person; and with an example of packaging. Be creative and experiment!

It is also very important to photograph your items on a  plain background so that your product is the main focus – personally I love a good white background for my products to make them POP! To photograph on a white background, you could use a piece of white cardboard outside in the natural light, or you could make your very own lightbox (example of mine shown below).

If you take a look at the following photographs, it’s easy to tell which is the most effective!

Quick Hint: To write this article, I decided to experiment with Jewelry photography. I found that photographing necklaces was particularly difficult because it was extremely difficult to get the right angle.  After much experimentation, I ended up using a mini art canvas and pinning the pieces to that. I definitely prefer the first example (pinned to the canvas) rather than having the piece just lying on the white cardboard. What do you think?

Soft Lighting

Really important no matter what you’re photographing!! Try photographing your products in the natural light near a window or by using a handmade lightbox – you’ll definitely see a huge improvement in your photographs!

You can also try using lamps to cast light over your products – try placing a lamp above, below and on the sides of your product and see what happens.

You should never use the flash on your camera when photographing your products because it will cast very dark shadows  in the background and will often make your product appear darker and really one dimensional too. If you take a look at the example to the right, you can see that the darker shadows make the bracelet look very plain and boring.

Exposure

It’s very important to learn how to expose your photographs correctly (plus it will save you time editing later too). When photographing your products on a white background, your camera automatically compensates for the bright background so your photographs will often appear much darker than they should.

The easiest and quickest way to ensure your photographs are correctly exposed is to adjust your exposure values. The photograph to the right shows where the exposure values can be found on my Canon SLR.

To change these values, you will need to photograph using either the manual or program settings on your camera. Your camera will automatically be set to zero which will often underexpose photographs with a bright background. Take a look at the examples below which illustrate the differences between the exposure values. Make sure you read your camera manual to learn how to chance these values for your own camera – you will need to experiment with these values to find the perfect value for your lighting conditions.

Editing Programs

For this particular section, I actually had a video that I made but I’ve since learned more efficiant ways to fix your darker photographs which I will cover in another tutorial.

For a free program, check out ‘photoscape’ or ‘picnik’ online. I personally use photoshop CS2 to alter my photographs but I’ll cover all three in my next tutorial!

Please feel free to share links to your new and improved product photographs after reading this guide!!

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