Product Photography Quick-Start

Whether you need photos for e-commerce, your website or Social Media. This guide will get you started.

​Two types of Photos
There are 2 types of product photography and you WILL need both. Lifestyle photography tells your brand story and aims to capture your products with people in everyday situations. Productphotography shows your product in detail. Most e-commerce hosting sites allow for up to 5 images per product. We recommend 2 lifestyle and 3 product shots most of the time. If your product needs more views to sell, use 4 or 5 product shots.

Insider Tip
Capture a minimum of 10 shots per individual Lifestyle and individual Product image. This insures you will have choice, even with technical or design error. You are also creating an image bank so you can change up your images to keep your site and social media fresh.

Shoot Checklist
Locations and styling for Lifestyle shots
"white box" for Product shots
tripod
camera
shot list

Insider Tip

Create a spread sheet that has your item name, number, description and features. Often this can be imported directly into your ecommerce platform, but it also acts a a checklist for what you need to show in your images. Show features in Product shots and benefits in Lifestyle.

Post Production

After the shoot you will likely need to do some work on the images before you post them. This could include color correction, cropping, using filters, etc. The most comprehensive tool for this is Adobe Photoshop, but it is expensive and has a learning curve. 

PhotoShop Express - a phone app with the most options for FREE. It lets you crop, fix red eye, share on social media, collage and more.

The Take Away

Humans retain 65% of what they see. That means photos are key to capturing customers and ultimately sales. Photo shoots are a big job. Determine if you have the time to photograph consistently and produce quality. If so, enjoy. If not, consider hiring a professional so you can focus on what you enjoy and do well like MAKING your product.


For more information, Contact Anne Cecil: [email protected].