Taking Great Product Photos On A Budget


Coming up with quality content to match to products is one of the biggest challenges that people face when they are building an online store for the first time. It’s easy to see that professional sites in this sort of field work incredibly hard to ensure that they have the right pictures, descriptions, and other resources to go with their listings, but this only makes it harder when you are trying to compete. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the work which can go into taking great product photos when you’re on a budget. A lot of people struggle with this, finding it hard to know what needs to be done when they are trying to take great product photos.

Camera vs. Lights
It’s easy to assume that spending a lot of money on a fancy modern camera will be your key to taking great quality photos. Of course, though, in reality, lighting is often the most important factor when you’re taking product photos, and even a bad camera can look great when you’ve got a good lighting set up. This makes it worth spending money on lighting instead of a camera, using your smartphone to capture the snaps themselves. You rarely have to spend a lot of money on things like this, with creativity and ingenuity usually winning the day.

Props and Sets
A lot of product photos you find around the web are very similar; a product with a white or transparent background. Achieving the results required to make this look good is very challenging, though, and most people will lack the skills and resources to achieve it. In this case, it can look much better to build yourself a small set for your photos. Female and male mannequins are great for clothing, while a wooden box and a book or two can be great for tech products. This can make your product photography a lot more fun, while making it look as though you care about your products.

A Touch Of Editing
Most of the photos you see in magazines and on ecommerce sites have had at least some degree of modification. Cameras rarely get the perfect shot, and photographers often spend just as much time at a computer as they do behind the lens. This can all be handled on a smartphone, with tools like Adobe Lightroom being free on these devices, making it easier to get started right away with your product photography. Adjusting color, cropping sizing, and sharpening up an image can make a huge difference to the way it looks, giving you the chance to create professional photos with little effort.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of taking great product photos on a budget. A lot of people struggle with this sort of project, spending far more than they have to without achieving the goals they had in mind. Of course, though, it’s possible to power an ecommerce store without spending too much; you just have to be creative.