How to: DIY Product Photography💡

Hello everyone! Today I am going to run you through a few tips and tricks to up your product photography game at home. Sometimes newer/smaller businesses don’t have the money to invest in product photography yet, or you just want to take some social media photos at home. Luckily you have found yourself here and I am going to give you my best five tips to get started.

(Please note, this article is probably not going to transform you into a photographer but I will do my best)

1) Natural light.

Natural light is your best friend, if you haven’t got any studio lights it doesn’t matter, because natural light is free. Shoot during the day and make sure to turn off overhead artificial lights. Use a large piece of white card or a light reflector to fill in any harsh shadows that the natural light may cause. The best times to use natural light if you really have NO equipment is on a cloudier day so that the light is evenly dispersed.

If its super bright and sunny out you can always make a DIY diffuser and hang some material such as sheet nylon or even a white bedsheet over the window, which you can get fairly cheap on amazon.

I shot this image in my conservatory on a relatively cloudy afternoon, no need for any extra lights.

I did use a light reflector balanced on a chair to make sure the shadows weren’t too harsh.

2) Cheap DIY Backdrops.

You most probably have a ton of backdrops in your home that you aren’t even aware of. Blankets, table tops, muslin, cardboard. Cardboard is a very underrated tool to be used in photography. I set up three pieces of cardboard and achieved this:

Fruit doesn’t cost much and makes a great prop - also you get to eat it after!

Please not that I did use adobe to edit out the card lines, you can however do this on multiple editing apps.

I then put a sheet of card on the floor, put a clear acrylic tray on top of it, filled it with water and fruit and achieved this:

Water is another great free prop. It can get a little messy so make sure to take precautions.

Water can take a photo from being nice but average to exciting and capturing as it gives another dimension and immediately adds an element of complexity.

3) Tripod.

Get yourself a tripod. you can get these super cheap online and you can get ones which support phones and/or cameras. A tripod will give you the sharpest images if you don’t know how to shoot manually. You can set the camera to auto put it on the tripod and it will achieve a sharp image. It will also bring consistency to your photos, simply switch products in and out of the same set to achieve the same light, angle and set up when shooting repeat e-commerce shots.

4) Use a camera.

??? Obviously?! Right… I know that seems obvious, but I don’t mean the one you carry in your pocket 24/7 that’s attached to your mobile phone. I mean a real camera, it doesn’t have to be expensive and you don’t need a ton of lenses, it just needs to be a camera. The reason being that your phone camera lens will most likely distort the actual shape and size of your product due to the lens it has. It is also near impossible to manipulate the settings to take the image you want, even if you aren’t super proficient with cameras, you can watch tutorials on YouTube and at least play around with camera settings to get a better shot.

If you have to use a phone, that is fine, you will get a fairly good result and stuff that’s useable for social media, I would just please ask you very very kindly that you don’t use portrait mode. There is a HUGE difference between your mobile using portrait mode and cheapening the image and a camera getting nice creamy bokeh to pique interest in an image. Trust me.

5) Stick to a colour palette.

Sticking to a colour palette and consistently taking images which follow the same theme will give your instagram and website a cohesive and more expensive feel. It has a subconscious effect on people and gives a feeling of comfort when images are similar and familiar but not the same. They can be shot in entirely different settings with different lighting but if the colour palette and/or the image editing is the same they will feel related.

6) Bonus point: Editing.

Product photos shouldn’t need much editing, for instagram it’s more acceptable to edit and tone your pictures. I use Lightroom which can be an extra unwanted expense, however you can use things such as Afterlight on your phone to toggle with curves and vibrance just to make your image pop a bit more. NOTE: don’t use preset filters made by the apps, it will look unprofessional and change what your product really looks like.

So there you have it, my top 6 tips and tricks for you to get started with product photography at home. Product photography is hard and it is a creative aspect to a business which not everyone has, I would still always recommend going with a professional to make sure that you products are doing the best they can in a saturated market.