Hey guys! Dave here, and today we're going to be talking all about t-shirt photography tips and
tricks- How you could get professional product shots for your clothing brand or your website
with just the equipment you have at home so are you ready let's learn and let's get right to it!
If you are new to the channel transfer express is the leading supplier of custom digital and
screen printed heat transfers for the apparel decorating industry with two facilities in
ohio and arizona we're equipped to meet the demand for our customers nationwide
we are dedicated to customer service and helping grow custom apparel businesses is our number one
priority everything we do is focused on making sure we send high quality
fashionable custom transfers on time and on a budget now today when you're buying online
you buy with your eyes and that makes your product photography the most important aspect
of your product listing yes you gotta nail the t-shirt the fit and feel are great but how do
you convey that information to your prospective customers when they're browsing your website or
engaging with your content online to get those awesome professional quality results at home
uh you can if you do have one laying around use a digital camera if you have one of these at home a
dslr a canon sony nikon these are absolutely going to give you the best resolution and the clearest
image quality possible when you're shooting now a lot of people don't have these or don't know how
to use them properly the number one best camera that you have on you at all times unless you're a
photographer or always carrying around a dslr is going to be the camera in your pocket now these
new smartphones have awesome cameras and awesome features of course lighting is the number one
step here in our studio here at transfer express we have a whole bunch of lights set up but we
know it's not all that accessible for everyone to get their hands on it is very very time consuming
to set up and learn how to professionally light things but we're going to show you how you don't
have to buy any lighting whatsoever and harness the natural light that's going to be available
to you in your apartment or your home or your dorm room or wherever you are will get you set
up and get ready to go we're going to use some parchment paper or any teflon sheets that you have
from your heat printing setup now this is awesome this is going to block a little bit of the light
and diffuse it so you don't have such hard shadows and a little bit more even lighting coming across
your t-shirt next we'll be talking about backdrops now you could use tons of different kinds of
backdrops and they are available in a wide different variety from paper to fabrics this one
right here this one is a kind of wood pattern so if you wanted to photograph something like a wood
floor this is a great way to be able to get that aesthetic now these do get wrinkled and beat up as
they get tossed around which is why we like using something more on the fabric side these are really
cool they're wrinkle resistant as they are but if they do get any wrinkles in them it's super easy
to steam them out if they get stepped on or get some dust or dirt on them they're really easy
to just throw in the washer and you're able to reuse them but these run uh probably starting
at like 50 or 60 bucks where the paper versions start more in the 20 range they are absolutely
awesome to have in the studio especially if you are trying to match the aesthetic for all of
your social media posts or all of your product listings it's a great backdrop to have and use
often so the last thing we're going to talk about here in our supplies is going to be a piece of
foam board now we just bought this piece of foam board at the dollar store um for a dollar but this
is going to be an incredibly versatile tool that we're going to be able to use as a fill card
so that's going to bounce some of our direct light that we're going to be harnessing from outside
back into our shadowed side of the t-shirt or product or whatever you're photographing
and we're going to show you how you could harness the natural light today to get some awesome photos
on your phone by yourself all right now that we are here right by our beautiful large window on a
bright sunny day you may need to take your tape and your parchment paper or a cover sheet or a
teflon sheet and just take it up to the window and tape it up to the window that's going to reduce
a lot of the hard shadows and kind of really diffuse a lot of the light coming in to give
you a little bit more natural studio look than a full sunlight look but we don't need it today
the clouds are diffusing the sunlight for us we got our backdrop just laid over a table here
now we're just using our one of our textured backdrops that does have a white back and so
this is all laid down is gonna be a great place for us to get started we're gonna take this uh
george washington shirt party like it's 1776 and lay it down if you do not have a t-shirt folding
uh card mechanism whatever really you want to call it you're going to just see where your
graphic is on your shirt and we're going to lay this face down onto the table we're going to place
our idea book right there on the graphic you want it as centered as possible now using this instead
of just freehand folding is going to allow you to get your graphic perfectly centered into the fold
and not fold it down too much or off to the side and so it looks very natural and retail ready so
we'll fold the sides over as we are there we'll fold this bottom up just a tiny bit
and we'll fold everything right on over now that we've got it up and over we'll flip it back over
and as you can see everything nice and centered it is folded a little bit underneath but it shows you
the collar line and down to the garment before we start taking any photos there's a few tips that we
should go over when you're taking photos with your phone all right first rule of thumb here is going
to be to make sure that your flash is turned off we have it turned off right up here in the upper
left hand corner if you're using an iphone to take your product photography we recommend turning the
live photo off your live photo is just right up here and that's going to take a short video
before and after you take your photo we can turn it off to just get a nice clear photo now second
do not zoom in so when you zoom in the image quality actually degrades and you can see here
at the bottom that it does have a 1.2 or whatever you want to stay at one time on newer iphones you
can even zoom out and get a wide angle we don't want to do that as well because that actually
switches to a wide angle lens on the back of the camera you want to stay at your regular one the
next step is to clean your lens you don't need to to run the whole treatment on it usually i just
make sure that i wipe it off you're touching your phone so often that it's easy to get fingerprints
on the lens surface this is going to make your photos look blurry and possibly distort the
light on them you don't want that steady camera is key especially in less than ideal lighting
conditions when you have a little bit less light than what the camera wants any shakes could change
your image for this first shot we're just going to be top down right here so all we're going to
do is get it set up here as close proximity to the window as we can to get the most light on it
and we have a nice white surface here now we'll go right up over top now here when you're looking
down on top of it it's really easy to see if the colors look accurate on your phone
versus what's happening on the actual shirt so we know the shirt here on the screen looks
a little dark you're going to select your actual t-shirt on the screen and when you tap and focus
on your object you get this little bar on the side so we're just going to drag this up a little bit
to see that improve and we're going to get a little bit more accurate color
on of what the shirt actually looks like i'm just noticing right here on the side uh especially when
looking through the camera we have quite the hard shadow here on this edge now to even the lighting
out and even some of the shadows in this garment let's go ahead and grab our piece of foam board
and we'll just use our tripod here to prop it up and it really evens things out and allows
you to take a much nicer photo bam before shooting directly flat like flat shots
we are going to move this to the floor so we just moved our backdrop down to the floor and we're
just going to go ahead and take our shirt lay it right down onto the floor and give us a good
little spot here to take some photos so going for kind of a natural look you want to keep
some of these wrinkles in the garment um and make it look like it was just tossed down but uh
professionally tossed down so as we get all set up here we have our fill card over on this side
so we'll go ahead and get our camera and we'll do the same exact thing that we did on the
table we'll bring up the exposure just a little bit and bam perfectly executed product photos
one thing that i love to do is just takes a little bit of short video um that you could
put on your social media feeds um and just while you're here all we'll do is make sure that we're
in a 16 by nine and we'll make sure that we can get the sparkliness here in the actual
print and if you're making tick tocks you get some nice vertical feed too and we'll start up close
that's it easy as that i hope that something we showed you today can make a positive
impact on your t-shirt product photography all of us at transfer express are absolutely
floored by your dedication to learning more and bettering your t-shirt business we want to be
here to be a resource for you every step along the way but if you haven't already
like this video and make sure to click that subscribe button and stay up to date about
all the content that we're posting weekly but until next time i'm dave happy pressing