Now today I want to talk to you about eCommerce photography now eCommerce is
a booming industry and with it so is eCommerce photography now we've got this
amazing blog post covering all aspects to do with eCommerce photography and I
know that a lot of you don't like long reads so I'm going to talk to you about
everything in that blog post here today in this video. Now as well as this
particular video within the blog post which can be found at KarlTaylorEducation.com
navigate to our blog and you'll find your way to this eCommerce
blog post within this blog post we have two more videos. One of them is an
eCommerce fashion video that shows you how to do eCommerce catalog fashion
shots with just a three light setup and the other one is an eCommerce product
video a sort of cosmetic style shop white-on-white
and that's done with continuous LED lighting so you'll find those videos
very very useful if you have an interest in eCommerce photography. Now, where was
I? So eCommerce photography, if it's done correctly it can be quick and it can be
an easy way to make money but there are a few tricks to getting it right now in
the recent how-to video that I did with broncolor's Urs Recher, we showed you an
effective lighting setup for shooting eCommerce fashion but there's much more
to online sales than just fashion shots so whether you're shooting fashion or
products I've outlined a few important guidelines for you that will help
produce the best possible results simply and easily. So how to shoot eCommerce
photography, there's no denying that strong photography will help sell images
(will not sell images) that sell products, and that's why product photographers are
some of the highest-earning photographers in the industry. Now
eCommerce, although it's a much simpler form of advertising photography it's
still equally powerful in persuading consumers to buy but there are a few key
details that we need to keep in mind when shooting. Number one, as always is
preparation. Now whether it be ironing clothes, cleaning and dusting a bottle of
shampoo, or thinking about the shots that you need or testing your lighting
beforehand. Preparation is key to any successful shoot now you can never be
too prepared when it comes to photography so take your time with this
part of the shoot some of the key things to do before the shoot include preparing
your items creating a shot list of your items and thinking about preparing your
lighting now preparing your items could include a variety of things it largely
depends on the items that you're going to be shooting for example if you're
shooting clothes make sure the items are clean and ironed pay attention to
details like loose threads or missing buttons these may seem like minor things
but correcting them before shooting will save you a lot of hassle further down
the line and a lot of post-production work further down the line now if you're
shooting packshot products for example it might be a box of tea or it might be
various different products make sure that the products sit well and that
there's no open edges on the shape of the boxes remember that many pack shots
involve shooting boxes or cartons or items that are packaged and how that
packaging sits is very important sometimes you actually need to take the
cartons apart reglue them or blu-tack them in place or use double-sided tape
so that they sit properly now one other thing that is really important with
product shots for e-commerce is to organize all of your products into
different size groupings of similar items and this is really imperative
because if you're going to do a batch of e-commerce shots in one day you want to
maximize how many products you can get through with the same lighting setup so
if you start off with a all cosmetic product and then you go to
a giant toy for example you're gonna have to move the camera change lens and
potentially even change your lighting so group items together based on size and
similarity as well now before you start shooting make sure you have that
comprehensive shot list based on size of items etc and include details such as
which items need to be photographed how many different angles are required for
each product and what if any props might be required to go along with the product
for each image now once you have an idea of the shots that you need you can start
thinking about your lighting what are the products you're shooting what are
they what surfaces do they have what color are they do they need soft light
do they need a slightly harder more sparkly light and the key thing is to
bring out the best of your product you have to represent it in its best way to
help sell it now ideally though you'll still want a versatile repeatable
lighting setup that will allow you to shoot a multitude of objects or products
without having to adjust your lighting for each shot because what we're talking
here is is ecommerce isn't you know very similar what we used to call it was pack
shop photography and the way to make money with pack shot photography was
consistency it was the ability to have a lighting setup that you could put an
object down press the shutter button then put the next object in and press
the shutter button and so on and so on and you want that repeatability but you
want it with clean pure white so that you don't have to do any cutout work so
your lighting has to be absolutely perfect and in one of those videos that
I mentioned earlier I demonstrate exactly how you can achieve that pure
white look without the needs for cutouts and this is again why the preparation
part is so important you're basically trying to create a production line of
photography of images of objects so having those objects well prepared the
cartons the boxes reflective items size of items and
organizing yourself really well first will help you rapidly shoot through
those objects in a day and get more shots done be more productive and
therefore basically make more money from the shoot okay the next thing we're
going to look at is equipment now really ecommerce requires very little in terms
of equipment you can get away with little more than two or three lights and
reflectors for your lighting and any half-decent DSLR or mirrorless camera
will be good for the job but you will need a good tripod I recommend a good
solid based tripod because you want that consistency you don't want to
accidentally tap your tripod on the whole tripod move so get yourself a
really good decent weighted tripod now other useful accessories for e-commerce
photography which you'll see oars and I use in the videos that I mentioned that
are in our blog post on Carl Taylor education these include the base that
you're going to use for your product to sit on or your model to stand on now in
these videos we used a white acrylic sheet for the base surface because that
white acrylic sheet is highly reflective and it reflects the back wall or the
back white lighting and it reflects it really cleanly onto the base as well so
you end up with a background and the base surface that are pure white and
therefore you don't need to do any cutout work now the white acrylic sheet
for the base surface is what's commonly used but you may use white foam board
you may decide that you need your products on a black material it depends
obviously on the type of e-commerce photography that you're doing but most
cases you're going to be looking at doing e-commerce type shots on pure
white a computer laptop tethered shooting is another good thing to
consider to tethering cable a large silver reflector can be a useful
accessory as can just be large sheets of white foam board to use as reflectors as
well now those are just some of the basics that you'll need for any
e-commerce product shot which you'll find will come in hand
for many different situations now you can learn more about my top 10
accessories for studio photography in another blog post that we have on Carl
Taylor education and it's also another video on our YouTube channel okay let's
talk about lighting now while there are many blog posts out there that advocate
for natural light there is no doubt that studio lights will allow for far greater
control and allow you to shoot at any time of day
so ecommerce photography typically features those clean white backgrounds
with bright well lit products and it's easier to accomplish this with studio
lighting than it is with natural light now as I mentioned in the video we've
got one video here where we demonstrate with three studio lights that are flash
studio lights and then we demonstrate another e-commerce shot which is three
lights that are continuous LED lighting so your options are there and are
available for you to consider which type of lighting will work best for you now
my top three tips for creating white backgrounds are consider the position of
your light the height the angle and the distance from the background will all
have an impact on the result remember you can measure your RGB values in your
tethered software now I usually do this in my focus software you can do this in
capture one and you can measure the values in Lightroom as well if you're
using Lightroom tethered now you generally want to get your white values
very close to two five five in the red channel the green channel and the blue
channel 255 indicates that you've achieved pure white but you don't want
to go beyond it so it's best to start actually below 255 and acknowledge and
see that you have achieved say to 5-0 and then you know you're not over
exposing the background and gone beyond 255 because the software won't register
anything over to by five so start slightly below it and
then increase the lighting gradually till you hit it and then you've just
peaked out a pure white rather than over exposing the background and potentially
damaging bleaching and causing flare onto your products by being dramatically
overexposed on the background now that is a really key tip with for product
photography because one of the dangers is flare flare can make your subject
appear flat and washed out and you definitely want to avoid that so be very
very careful with those measuring those values from your light coming from the
background or the light on your pure white background now the setup shown in
the videos that I've mentioned that are on the blog post on Carl Taylor
education comm are particularly good if you're shooting fashion for one of the
videos but if you don't have three lights you can also achieve some great
results using just one light and a large octa box from an overhead position and
you can see that in this particular portrait photography class on our
website where I get great results just with one light setups as well two light
setups allow you more versatility and you can do this with affordable
modifiers and you can see a great tutorial that we've got on Cal Poly
education here as well now all of these lighting setups are ideal for shooting
with a model because they're versatile in nature of the lighting which allows
for a very fluid shooting process which is what you want with e-commerce fashion
photography especially you want to be able to shoot many pictures and many
different poses many angles and you want the model to have the freedom for
example if we look at some of my commercial work you'll see that the
fashion images are very much more locked down and rigid because the lighting is
very much more specific to a specific place or point that type of lighting
isn't suitable at all for e-commerce photography because it's not versatile
because as soon as the model moves ahead body angle or position then the certain
area or feature of the light changes and then the the subject material changes
what you need for e-commerce photography is a lighting style where the model has
complete flexibility and versatility to move around in any position and yet the
shop will work from any angle so it's a different type of lighting compared to
some of my usual fashion work that you can see here now when it comes to
lighting and shooting products for e-commerce you can easily get away with
a two light setup using just a reflector and a large softbox or a medium-sized
softbox you can see that in some of our previous live shows now other
accessories that you might find useful include diffusion material mirrors the
white and black foam board that we mentioned and depending on your subject
you may want to either maximise texture or reduce unwanted reflections so you
have to think carefully about the position and the distance of your light
in relation to the product and again keep in mind the fact that you need a
versatile setup that will allow you to work quickly and efficiently with your
shot list and that production line you've got of all the products lined up
ready to shoot now the next thing to consider is the shooting process once
you've got your lighting set up for e-commerce photography make sure your
tripod is firmly in position and that your product and subject looks as good
as it possibly can and that you're ready to start shooting now in theory this is
where all your planning will come together the better that you've planned
the smoother your shooting will go now although you'll want to work quickly
don't forget to pay attention to the details and this is why tethered
shooting can be particularly helpful because you can see those details much
more clearly than you can if you're just trying to look at the image on the back
of the camera now remember to refer to your shot list throughout the shoot and
double-check it the end so that you haven't missed
anything out and that your client is going to come back to you and say oh
you've missed one or two shots and then you've got the problem of setting up the
whole ecommerce packshot thing again but you don't want to do so really be
thorough with your checklist and your shoot list now finally we need to
consider post-production now while I strongly encourage you to get as much
right in camera as possible don't neglect the finishing touches in the
post-production stage now in the videos on the blog post here you'll see that we
actually produce really high quality e-commerce images without any
post-production and that's what you need to be aiming for but you may well still
need to fix the odd blemish and flaw in the product or fashion shot typically
this could include applying simple crops to your image increasing the exposure
slightly or liquefying rough edges or doing just removing blemishes or fixing
stray hairs those sort of things now while you don't want to spend hours on
each shot correcting these little details will make a big difference for
your client and the likelihood of you getting rebooked again for packshot and
e-commerce photography now if you're looking to share these images to social
media or upload them to an online store or an online website there are a few
things you will have to do before putting the images out there now some of
the common adjustments that you may need to include are resizing your images to
the correct dimensions and we've got a great class on resizing the images and
the other thing to consider is applying slight sharpening to the images and the
final crop as well and the amount of sharpening that we apply for images for
the web we cover in depth on one of our micro Photoshop tutorial classes here on
Carl Taylor education comm now one other important thing that can really help
improve your workflow in the post-production is that you'll find when
you're doing Photoshop retouching on ecommerce images you'll find that you're
really usually doing the same sort of commands
either lightening the exposure a little bit pulling up the highlights a bit
adding a little bit of contrast applying a certain crop and quite often they'll
be exactly the same command over and over again so think about creating your
own actions that you record and then you save that action and then you can just
simply play that action again when you've got another batch of images and
when you play that action it will run through all of those folder of images
automating those Photoshop commands so that you don't have to do them manually
and that can be a huge speed up to your workflow if you're not familiar with how
to create actions in Photoshop again we've got a wonderful class on Carl
Taylor education that teaches you exactly how to do it if you enjoyed this
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