- It's common knowledge that making
good quality handmade products is necessary
for your handmade business to succeed,
but turns out it's just as important
to have top quality product photos as well.
If your product photos look amateurish or poor quality,
in other words average,
it will directly affect conversion rate, AKA your sales.
Bad photos also affect your brand image,
which can impact how much your customers
are willing to spend on your products,
which in turn can really eat away at your profit margins.
And with smartphones that take great pictures
and cameras that are more and more affordable,
average product photos simply aren't enough anymore.
Only one problem, it can be pretty daunting to get started
if you have zero experience in photography.
What do you need?
Where do you start?
It is absolutely doable
to learn how to take high-quality images
for your handmade products.
So today I'm going to go through all the information
you need in order to take top quality photos
that will make your shop and products stand out.
Let's dive in.
(playful music)
Bonjour, my name is Deb,
and I'm the founder of Tizzit.co,
a membership community for makers and handmade shop owners
just like your fabulous self.
You can learn more about our community, Tizzit HQ
via the link below this video,
but for now let's jump straight into today's conversation,
how to get started with your handmade product photos.
Let's start by walking through the equipment you'll need
to take beautiful, impressive photos of your products.
There are four things needed for your home studio, a camera,
a source of light, a nice background,
and an editing software.
Let's start with number one, your camera, two options here,
the first is your smartphone
if it is fairly recent and has a good camera.
If you're really short regarding budget,
this is actually a really viable option.
It won't give you as much flexibility as a DSL camera would,
but it can absolutely be enough.
If you do go the smartphone route,
I would suggest you do a quick search
to see if your smartphone
allows for manual or professional mode,
and if it doesn't, for apps, you can download
that actually enable the manual settings
when you use your phone camera, meaning that
instead of just automatically picking the settings for you,
you have more control over those and can use your phone
almost like a real camera,
adjusting things like shutter speed,
aperture and all these things
I'm about to talk to you about.
The second option is, as I just mentioned,
a DSLR or a mirrorless camera,
AKA what we think about when we think camera.
When you start looking at cameras,
you will see all the latest models
that are really expensive,
and you might feel like
you need to get the most current model
because you don't know exactly what features you need,
and so the safe choice is the latest one, right?
This is what most camera brands will tap into as well,
making you feel as if you don't buy the latest model,
you won't get very far with your pictures,
that, you know, the camera would be too old
to take good shots or whatever.
But the truth is that you don't need to go out
and buy a super expensive brand new camera.
In fact, please don't,
even a five-year-old camera body will do just fine.
Just make sure you bought a reputable brand
like Canon, Nikon, Sony,
but it does not need to be the latest model by any means.
If you really wanted to spend money,
I'd much prefer you spend it on a good lens for your camera
or a second lens, but honestly,
that's a bit more down the track as well.
Once you've got a bit more experience
it's not necessary to get started, save your pennies.
Now, once you have a camera,
you're going to hold it in your hands and go,
what do I do with this thing?
There's a tonne of options, and buttons, and menus
and things to click on, and it can feel pretty daunting.
My advice is this, before you start taking pictures,
take the time, and I know this is going to sound boring,
but trust me on this, to watch an online tutorial
for your specific camera model
and learn how to change the settings
and navigate your camera menu.
Creative live has some great camera tutorials
by a photographer called John Greengo
called The Fast Start Tracks,
and they exist for almost every model of camera out there.
I highly recommend those, and of course, I mean,
there's always, well, you know, YouTube.
Just search your camera model and I'm sure you'll find some
great intro video to help you navigate your camera settings.
It's something you will only need to do once, thankfully,
but if you try and get comfortable with the settings
as you're also trying to learn how to take pictures,
you're really quickly gonna become overwhelmed
and feel like it's all too hard.
My second tip here is realising
that you do not need to understand more than a few things
to take really good pictures.
You don't need to understand how to use
the entire camera's features.
In fact, there are four main concepts you need to understand
to really master your product photos.
The first is shutter speed, the second is aperture,
the third is ISO, I-S-O, or maybe it's IZO,
Eye-S-O, AYZO, I Saw?
This three things are known as the exposure triangle,
and the fourth thing is depth a field.
Once you learn how to adjust these things,
you are on your way
to taking absolutely stunning product photos.
I will link below to my favourite tutorials ever on this.
They are from another YouTube channel called Apalapse,
only five minute long each and super simple and clear.
You will feel like a pro in no time at all
after watching them, but stay with me before you watch those
as we've got a few more things to cover in this video.
So last tip when it comes to mastering your camera
is to spend an afternoon taking pictures
with your camera without aiming to take good pictures.
Bonus if you do, but it's really about taking an afternoon
to play around with your camera, experiment with different,
you know, camera settings to get comfortable,
with how each affects your photos, pure learning.
It feels much less daunting than if you set the bar at
I must take great pictures for my product by tonight,
and it's your first time using your camera.
Just plan to write off a half day just to have fun
and give yourself that space to learn.
Now that you've completed step one and chosen your camera,
and you had a fun day taking, you know, practise photos,
and learning which buttons control what,
let's talk about the other supplies you need
in order to make your photos and your products
look top-notch.
Good lighting.
Lighting is a critical aspect of good photography.
If you don't have good light, you won't get a good shot,
no matter how fancy your camera is or what settings you use.
There are two types of lights you can use,
natural or artificial lighting.
Let's start with natural light.
Natural light, when done well,
will give you the most natural looking pictures
and beautiful results
because it has a natural, neutral colour tone.
If you have a big window, a table you can put in front of it
and some white cardboard
to bounce the light and get rid of hard shadows,
this can be a great setup for your photos.
The problem with natural light is that you might not have
the perfect conditions for it.
Maybe you don't have the perfect window in a perfect spot
in your house, or the weather may be too cloudy on the day
you plan to take photos.
In other words, natural light is free and can be wonderful,
but it also is by definition,
much harder to control and can change quite quickly.
If you need to do a shoot over a couple of days,
and the weather changes, for example,
the light in your photos will be different too,
making it hard to take consistent shots.
So for this reason,
I'm starting to recommend more and more that using
artificial lighting with the right equipment
might be easier, especially if you're just starting out.
The main advantage of artificial light is that you can
control your environment, weather, and time of the day,
they really don't matter,
you can recreate the exact same light
at any time on any day.
This is really convenient when you need to work late,
for example,
or on days when the weather isn't collaborating,
and it also removes the pressure of working fast
to take advantage of the natural light outside
before it changes.
You can buy a set of two light boxes or umbrella light
at a reasonable price on Amazon
that will really set you up for successful photos.
The ones I'm using right now cost me about
50 Australian dollars, so affordable,
and another thing that I like
is that they come in sets of two
so you can have a light on each side of your product
and avoid nasty shadows
without having to bounce the light
using a reflector or cardboard,
which is often the case when you're using natural light.
The most important thing if you use artificial light
is to use the right light bulb,
so that your pictures don't look too cold or blue
or too warm or yellow.
To replicate the neutral look of natural light,
your light bulb needs to have a Kelvin temperature of 5,000.
Kelvin is a unit used to describe
the colour temperature of a light bulb.
Lower numbers mean warmer, softer light,
middle numbers are a neutral white,
and higher numbers are a cooler, bluer light.
So when you buy a light bulb,
it will have the Kelvin temperature stamped on it
or on the box, look for a number followed by a K
and make sure yours reads 5,000 or 5,500 K.
Now, whether you decide to use natural or artificial light,
what's important to understand is the difference between
direct and indirect lighting.
Direct light means that the light, natural or not,
hits your products directly without being reflected,
bounced or filtered.
It will cast hard shadows on your objects.
So for example, the sun rays hitting your product directly
or light from a light bulb that's not filtered through
an umbrella or a soft box, that would be direct light.
Indirect light means that the light
isn't hitting your products directly
and, or that you are diffusing it through a soft box
or an umbrella.
If you're just starting,
you will want to use indirect lighting
for your product photos.
Working with direct light is very tricky,
and although you might see some shops
playing with hard shadows and dark sun rays,
this is certainly not the norm, nor easy to do,
so sticking to indirect light
is absolutely the best move here.
Now let's move on to choosing your photo backdrop.
There are two types of backgrounds that you can use.
Let's start with solid backgrounds.
Most of the advice you will find out there will tell you
that you need to have a white backdrop.
It's true that in some cases it's nice to have,
but you can also break out of that role
and experiment with other colours
as long as they work with your brand and are nice contrast
with the product you are photographing.
For example, if you think your product
would look really good on a blue background,
or you think that, say, a pink background
is a great tie-in to your brand,
definitely experiment with it and give it a try.
The most important thing to remember
when it comes to your background
is to make it seamless, which means no seams
or lines are visible in the photo.
That way, viewers don't notice the background at all.
The easiest way to get a seamless background
is by using a single sheet of paper or a paper sweep.
The paper sweep is created by taking a large roll of paper,
elevating it and attaching it to some type of holder
like an easel, then letting it drop down and sweep forward
onto a flat surface to create a backdrop
with no creasing.
If your product is small,
you can also just use a piece of cardboard or sturdy paper.
Whichever colour you end up with, if it's not white,
also make sure that it offers a nice contrast
with your product, so if you sell, you know,
a brown leather wallet,
maybe don't go for a brown background.
Something else you might want to experiment with is called
a lifestyle background.
Lifestyle backgrounds are things like wood, tile,
basically a more textured backdrop.
You can buy the real thing
or use extra that you have around your house,
or you can actually buy backdrops like this online.
Just makes sure that they are nice quality and look real
because of course you don't want to have your backdrop
look fake or tacky.
Be creative, this is a great way to add a little texture
to your picture if it compliments your product well.
Keyword, a little texture though.
You don't want to go overboard
and have your customers fixated on the background.
What's at the forefront, your product
needs to be where the eyes go
so your background is there to support that,
it shouldn't be conflicting with your products,
and that especially is true if you have a lot of texture
or pattern on your product itself,
we don't want them to clash.
So you'll have to experiment
to see what backdrops work well,
and I always, always recommend that you ask
for constructive feedback here, because as with everything,
other people will notice things that you don't,
and you will end up with much better pictures
if you ask for feedback along the way.
If you are a Tizzit HQ member,
head over to our community forums
and ask us for feedback on your photos.
You will be amazed at all the small details
that we can think of to help your product photos
look even better than they are now.
And if you're not a Tizzit HQ member,
I don't know why you aren't,
check out the link below to learn more about our community.
Shameless plug in the middle of the video.
Now, moving on to the last piece of the puzzle,
your editing software.
Using a good photo editing app and software
not only will help you make your pictures look better,
but also save you a lot of time, because photo apps
not only allow you to touch up your pictures,
but also to export them into dimensions
that your platform requires.
My top picks are Lightroom CC for a desktop computer
and Snapseed for your mobile.
But I would really recommend watching my video
about choosing the best photo app.
It covers even more photo editing options,
and I talk about the pros and cons of each one.
I'll put the link down below this video
for you to watch if you'd like.
So of all the things I'm telling you
about product photography today,
this is the one I want you to pay extra special attention to
times three the time you think it will take you
if you are just getting started.
This won't be the case forever,
but if you're new to taking photos and you think a project
will take you two hours, plan for six,
and don't beat yourself up for it,
you need to embrace this learning curve.
It's going to take trial and error,
and at first you might feel really frustrated
when you look at your photos and you're like,
that's not exactly what I wanted.
That's not perfect.
But trust me when I say this,
it's totally normal, and it's the best way to learn
is just trial and error.
If you are new to taking photos,
schedule three days, instead of one,
give yourself time to try different settings
and get your photos looking just the way you want
without feeling stressed about a deadline on top of it.
Have some fun with it, it's like learning to ride a bicycle.
Once you know how it works
and you have figured out the settings
that work best for you,
it will become very quick and easy to take your pictures
and you will become very good at it.
Remember that the time and money
you invest in good product photos are so worth it
because they will have a direct impact on your sales.
So now that you've learned how to take great product photos,
all that's left to learn is how to enhance your photos
and edit out the tiny imperfections.
So your next step is to go and watch this video
that's showing somewhere on the screen right now,
detailing my six step process
for easy product photo editing.
It includes a free checklist to use as you edit your photos.
Click here to watch it now, somewhere on this screen.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, and until next time, au revoir.