HOW TO GET STARTED WITH ECOMMERCE PHOTOGRAPHY!

Are you the honorable owner of a drop shipping or merchandise online store? If so, something that plays a key role in the success of your store goes to your product photography! You don’t need to transcend at it, you just need to master the basics of it! Right now, right here, we are going to give you a plethora of tips & tricks for ecommerce photos.

1) Preparation:

For the very first step, ensure to write or type in a notepad in preparation, the following:

  1. What products are you going to get shots of?
  2. How many photographs are you going to take of that product?
  3. What are you trying to showcase in that one shot/What is the purpose of the shot?
  4. What angles do you want to achieve/ do you want a close-up or do you want a wide-shot showcasing the entire product?
  5. Do you need any models for your product shot? If so secure their schedule for the day of the shoot.

This should be done a day before, when you’re planning on what to do the next day. As to ensure once the day begins, you’re well organized, and you deliver what is required.

Later on, when capturing the shots, ensure these conditions are met, if not, try, try and TRY again! Once you get the hang of it, you’ll have no problem acquiring a faster skill set, slowly but surely! Don’t lose hope!

2) Get your equipment ready.

Once preparation is ready, you need to set up your equipment. (Below are some examples of the most useful equipment used for an ecommerce store’s product shots. You can definitely utilise more.)

2A) Lighting:

If available in your location, I’d highly suggest you try out natural lighting. Simply move to a nearby window that allows for a huge volume of sunlight to pass through, and that your product can be clearly seen through your camera.

If not available, or you would just like to get better lighting involved. Employ your studio lights! Plug em’ in, set the right intensity, project them directly onto the object and ensure that your product can be clearly seen through your camera.

2B) Backdrop

A backdrop is in a nutshell, a replacement background so that your consumer’s focus is directly on the product. As well as to ensure your shots have a clearer aesthetics to it, which delivers a higher trust factor towards your consumers!

Backdrops usually come white in color. However, if you’re photographing a white product, you should switch to the opposite colour, which would be black.

If you don’t have extra expenses to be spending it on a backdrop, I’d highly suggest you find the cleanest looking wall available in your house, clean it and prepare for your shot!

2C) Camera

When coming to this stage, you could either use an expensive DSLR or just use your mobile phone camera. With technology evolving on the daily, the majority of mobile phones are more than capable of capturing stunning shots, if in the right hands.

Once gaining your camera, get the lens needed for your shots. If you need multiple lenses such as a macro and a wide lens, ensure you have them ready for your shot too!

Right after that, set up your tripod OR if you’re cutting down costs, use any table or surface to stabilize your camera.

Now that the camera is ready to shoot, do a quick check that you have the correct settings as what is required. Take a picture with a test subject, ensure that everything works flawlessly!

3) Taking the shot:

To gain the perfect shot that will blow the minds of your consumers, you need to take note of the following:

  • Aperture, this is details how much light is passing through your lenses.
  • Focus, this is how sharp the image is, of your product.

That’s about it. There are more to learn as you go on your eCommerce journey, but this are just the basics to take notes of.

4) Photo editing:

Photo editing is really unneeded if you have already completed the above (except for colour correction and upscaling). Since the majority of the things you would do in a photo editing software for eCommerce would just be background removal, focusing and so on, those have all been done here already.

If you have done the above already, photo editing is just unneeded, even if you just want to upscale or colour correct your image or Photoshop retouching service, it’s just going to improve a tad bit of your image. If I were to choose, I would rather invest that time into other things an eCommerce store would need, such as marketing.

5) Uploading the image:

Uploading the image is rather easy, just remove the SD card, and slot it into your laptop. If your laptop doesn’t have an SD card slot, simply just purchase a lightning/USB adapter for SD cards. Once inserted, locate the needed files, then move them to a local file on your laptop, so you can free up space on your SD card.

Once that’s completed, you might need to compress your image before uploading to eCommerce websites. Finally, submit the photo and be on your way to a successful eCommerce career! I hope you gained some knowledge and a few tips & tricks for eCommerce photos! Good luck!