Product Photography

Creative Product Photography

Why is Product Photography So Important?

Product photography is more than just a way to display your products to potential buyers. It’s an essential part of your marketing strategy, helping to build trust in your brand and your business, keeping visitors on your website, and showing the value that a product can offer.

t also helps to minimize returns and can boost conversions, so it’s definitely a worthwhile investment of your time and effort.

When you’re selling a product, whether it’s a food item, tech, clothing or something else, you need the buyer to be able to visualize the details and understand what it is they’re purchasing. Without high-quality photos, it’s hard for them to determine whether an item is right for their needs.

Photos are the best and most effective way to convey those details, and tell a relatable story about how the product will fit into a customer’s life.

Decide on your style

Having a distinctive style is the key to making your images recognizable, and helping build loyalty from your audience.

Research suggests that good product photography can increase your conversion rate by 30%. Product photography lets your customers see the details of the item to entice them to buy, and they add value not only to product pages but also to your marketing campaigns and social media channels too.

There are two main types of product photos:

Minimalist product photos, which are detail-focused and typically show the product on its own against a solid color backdrop
Active product photos are shots of the product in the context of its use

Your images should reinforce your central message and your branding, so think about how you want your images to appear and the types of products you’re selling.
For example, if you’re an e-commerce business, minimalist images can be the best choice. Promotional photos such as flat-lays can be an effective marketing tool.
Flat lays can be as simple or as orchestrated as you want, from crisp images showing just the product itself to curated pictures that are surrounded by other objects, such as ingredients for a food product.
Flat lay photography is an image taken from above, with the products laid down so the ground acts as your backdrop. It gives you a bird’s eye view of one or multiple products, which creates a really clear visual.
Flat lay photography is popular for a range of industries, but particularly for e-commerce because it enables brands to create storytelling vignettes with the images, while putting their products front and center.

Get the Lighting Right

Lighting is an important factor in product photography, helping you to capture the details of the item in question while setting the mood of your photo

Soft lighting creates a halo-like effect that illuminates the product from all angles, and reduces the risk of harsh shadows that can obscure some of the details of the product.

Play with the Composition

When it comes to making product photos stand out, composition is key. Composition is the way you arrange the visual elements of an image to create the right balance in the photo. It leads the eye where you want a potential customer to focus, contributes to the mood, and can even demonstrate the product’s use.

Before taking a photo, experiment with different layouts and arrangements until you find the right fit.

Play with Backgrounds

Yes, your products are the focus of the image, but there’s a real benefit to carefully considering your backgrounds. Backgrounds can perfectly offset the product, drive a narrative, or make your photos stand out from competitors by showing similar products in a fresh way.

A sweep (a curved, seamless background) creates a perfect all-around product backdrop, without corners or blemishes.