digital photos

Product Photography

August 25, 2009 /

Anasfadilah has asked me to share my picture taking tips and I’m going to do so here but bear in mind that I am no professional photographer. The technique I used might be different from the way it supposed to be.

To start your own shooting session, you need of course your digital camera,  backdrop, lighting, your products, some props, camera settings and photo editing program. I’m going to skip on the camera as if you own a camera, you might already know how to operate it. I’m going to cover on the latters.

1. Backdrop. I like to shoot my products on white so my main backdrop is the typical white mount board or white drawing pad. I am too lazy to make my own lightbox but if you’re up to it, you can do so with foam boards. But you gotta need a lamp with daylight bulbs to make it works.

Look at my backdrop 😀

outdoor-studio

Vary your backdrops. It depends on how you want your products to be. If you want to skip all the hassle setting up the background, you can follow what I did; snap photos on white. But if you want to be a little more creative, you can use your coloured walls, your table runner, your curtains, anything! Here’s a sample I did with table runner as backdrop:

sampleduck
I took this one inside the house near the window.

2. Lighting. I use natural lighting and that means I only take photos during the day. I rarely shoot at night but if there’s an urgent products  need to upload in my blog or shop during the night, I use the speedlight (I use Nikon D40X).  But as many of us are using compact digital cameras, I suggest doing the photography during day time and if possible outside the house. You can still take photos from inside the house but make sure to set your setting near the door or window.

3. Products. Prepare your products and think on what is the best trait of your product. If it’s a cake or food, think on how to make it more appealing.

4. Props. Be creative and use related props to accompany your products. Here’s a sample I did for my cousin Diana:

Try to accompany your products with anything you can get from your house. Try to take shots with as many props as you can so you can choose the best ones later.

Note: For photo above, I use off-white canvas which covers the drawing pad. The perfume bottles are a bit dull and I use colored marbles to make them more lively. Since the bottles are transparent, I saw it was best to capture from the shadow side (backlight).

5. Camera settings. Make sure your flash is turned off and you can set the camera either on auto without flash or  regular macro (the one with the flower icon). Focus only on products and snap. Also try to take capture from different angles; top view, sideview, etc. Take hundreds of photos! What have you got to lose; it’s digital camera!

6. Edit your photos. Use GIMP (works as good as PS and it’s a free opensource software) and edit your photos. Crop your pictures, you don’t need to show everything, you only need to emphasize on the products. Adjust the contrast and brightness, etc. Before uploading to your blog, optimise the photos coz if you use the original size, it’ll take 2 years to load!Here’s 2 samples of cropped and brightness adjusted photos:

samplepic kc_pinkcat

7. References. Get insight from great magazines such as Real Simple, Oprah’s, Martha Stewart’s Living, Vogue Living, etc. Study their photographs as well as composition and colour schemes. Don’t forget to search the Internet for basic photography tips.

mags

That’s it! These are only the basics from me and don’t let my tips gets in your creativity. Experiment, experiment and experiment!!

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