Product photography: how good photos turn into sales

Transparency

Before starting, it’s important to make sure that you’ll be showing honest photos that are true to life. This will reflect exactly what your customers will be receiving and boosts your brand’s reputation. Make sure all the photos taken reflect what the product is in real life. Without accurate photography, sales of even your best products could suffer.

Lighting

Lighting is arguably the most important aspect of product photography and depends on the overall feel you want your product to give. Let’s say you’re selling or renting property – you’ll want to show off as much of the property as possible, so a photo of a luxurious 3-bedroom house captured on an overcast day wouldn’t be the best idea. Instead, using soft, bright light and taking photos towards the sunlight with little shadow will show the best features.

A good example of taking advantage of natural light in product photography is this North East property agency’s website. On the contrary, if you’re a bar owner and sell dark liquor, you’d want to take a photo of a bottle of whiskey in front of a dark backdrop so the alcohol’s warmer colours are highlighted.

Consistency

Consistent photos are a non-negotiable in persuading customers and building brand identity. Photos shot from the same set of angles, with the same camera settings and edited the same way will enhance your brand’s identity and boost brand recognition by allowing people to recognise the brand solely based off the photos of products. Before shooting any photos, you can create a mood board to help decide what your brand’s aesthetic will be and stick to it. This generally means the colour palette of the photos should be cohesive.

Editing

By no means does editing mean altering the appearance of your product to give off a false impression. Editing photos to make them look different from reality could lead to bad reviews and negative publicity. However, you can use simple editing techniques to remove photo backgrounds so the focus is on the product, combine multiple photos to create a 360° photograph, add shadows, or remove reflections. Editing is also useful for changing the size of a photo so it is fit for the social media platform it is going on. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all have different image sizes that need to be adhered to if you want the whole image to be seen.

The bigger picture

The difference between a sale and a just another scroll on your website could very well be your photography. Whether it’s food, fashion or real estate, good product photography that creates a sense of desire has been proven to increase customer engagement. It’s vital that your photography is an honest representation of your products and is also aesthetically pleasing through consistency, range, context, and good lighting.

For more easy-to-apply tips to help your business thrive, refer to our other blog posts here