Product Photography Basics
So you've started a brand and want to show it off to the world. Congratulations! Now, more than anything, you need product photography. Unfortunately, for many start-up companies focused on food and beverage consumer packaged goods (CPG), photography falls by the wayside until it fits in the budget. With these beginner's tips, you can master product photography until you can afford to pay for a professional shoot.
What is product photography?
Product photography encompasses a few different types of photographs. Usually, a mix of all of the following are needed to ensure a brand is well-represented online. Take a look at the list of types of product photography and think about what applies to your brand.
Lifestyle: Lifestyle product photography features your product in a natural setting where it would appear. Read more about lifestyle photography here.
Packaging: Packaging product photography emphasizes the packaging a consumer can expect when looking for your product on the shelf or unboxing. Usually, packaging photos are required by Amazon and Shopify to sell a product. These photos vary in style, but it's likely that you'll need a mix of plain white background and some simple studio shots to use on your website and social. These are also sometimes called product on white photos.
Studio Set-Up Shots: Studio set-up shots are heavily styled shots that showcase your product in its best light in a slightly more natural setting than a stark white background.
What do you need for product photography?
For some of these shots, especially the packaging shots, you only need your product and a few nice backgrounds. Simple enough, right? Sure. But! When you're selecting the product that you're going to photograph, you should always have packaged product and unpackaged product on hand to show both angles.
When you're selecting the beauty product (photographer speak for the one you're going to photograph!), make sure it's just that: beautiful. The product itself needs to be the best example of what you're offering. The packaging featured in the packaging shot needs to be free from the usual wear and tear that packages get.
Once you move into the more lifestyle and studio set-up shots, you'll need to get some props to fill in your photos. We'll talk about how to pick props that align with your brand and product in another post.
You'll also need a camera of some sort. Whether a high-quality iPhone or a DLSR, you need something that can capture high-quality, high-resolution images. Here’s a behind the scenes peek at what it takes to set up a thoughtful food photograph to get you started.
How can I do product photography at home?
Once you have everything you need, you should get together a shoot plan. I’ll talk more about everything that needs to go into a shoot plan to make a photoshoot effective and efficient in another post, but the key thing to have in mind is a list of shots that you need to get. Once you know what shots you need and you have all of your equipment sorted out, it's easy enough to get started on shooting product photography at home: just start taking pictures!
What settings should I use on my camera for photography?
There's really no way to tell you exactly what settings you should be using. After all, camera settings depend on the amount of light in your studio, your subject, and about a dozen other variables. If you're not familiar shooting with a DLSR camera, use the automatic settings until you can learn more about how to adjust the settings manually.
How do I take a creative product photo?
There are a ton of different ways to get creative with your product photography. It can be overwhelming to figure out a shot list, so I recommend starting with the most strategic options for your photography. As much as I love encouraging people to give it a go on their own at home, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional to get what you need. In the world of fast-moving feeds, you need content that aligns with your brand and effectively makes you stand out from the crowd. Need help with that?