Lessons in Product Photography

Lately I feel like I've been climbing a hill, no, a mountain. At the bottom of the mountain are tons of poorly lit, blue-tinted photographs, with fuzzy lines and bad staging. At the top of the mountain is Megan Gonzalez, of Mae Mae Paperie, and all of her impeccably staged & photographed designs.

In reality, I am probably somewhere about 65% up the mountain, but lately I feel as if I am at the very bottom, with the goats. And the goats have diarrhea.

While feeling like your surrounded by ill goats isn't fun, it is certainly very motivating to get the hell out of that place. After re-taking the photos for my iPad covers at least 5 times, I finally said "enough is enough" and started really looking into ways to improve my pictures. I asked my peers in the Minted community, I googled specifics and I asked my photographer friends. And by golly, I have learned a lot.

My biggest complaint with my pictures were the colors. My whites weren't white, the colors themselves weren't always true to the original print, the text was fuzzy. And while all of these things might not have been a huge issue with, say, business cards, they were big issues to me in preparing to launch my wedding line. I simply don't have the budget to hire a photographer, so this girl needed to give the goats some tums, and learn to take good pictures. And by take good pictures, I mean edit, edit, edit in photoshop.

If you like the iPad cover in that picture, you can go get yourself one here! 

So here are some tips I generally follow:

1- White balance. I always adjusted the white balance on my camera, but now I do it again in Photoshop. I adjust the curves, vibrancy and saturation of every picture. The three together seem to be a good combo for me right now.
2- Add an unsharp mask. My Mintie friends turned me on to this one. I put a sharpening mask over the entire image so that the text looks clear & sharp.
3- Use natural light. I always take my picrures by a window on a cloudy day. I also put white tissue paper over the windows to help diffuse the light even more. The tissue paper helps me to take pictures on sunny days without a glare.
4- Background counts. I had taken hundreds of pictures of my iPad covers on top of a light cream fabric background only to find later that there just wasn't enough contrast. Every product will look different depending on the background.
5- Speaking of backgrounds, I just purchased a bunch of seamless papers from Adorama. I thought it would be easier to use a gray bed sheet from Target to shoot my wedding line on. But after ironing it for hours, and then having to edit out all of the wrinkles, I think the seamless paper is a fabu-freaking-lous idea.
6- The lens matters. A lot. Unfortunately, the lens I used to shoot my initial wedding line photos distorted all of the "head-on" pictures. I was using a standard 18-55mm lens, and a photographer friend suggested I used a macro or 50mm lens. It's an investment I am going to be making in the very near future.

So there you have it, some of my photography tips. I'll try to post more tips as I learn them, since I have a feeling that product photography will always be a new adventure.

If you'd like some more tips, take a trip down memory lane and read this post, which I wrote over a year ago on photography and staging for stationery.

Stationery Staging and Photographing

 I'm spending a lot of time lately trying to take better pictures of all of my designs. Pictures are a huge part of selling your product - if what you're selling doesn't look good in a picture, who's to say it'll look good in real life? It's mind boggling to me when I browse through "successful" websites and see the crappy pictures they have of their products. I'd like to think they are the exception to the rule, because I do genuinely believe good pictures sell better than bad ones.

So, with that, let me first say I am still learning the art of photographic my products. I've come a long way since I first started designing, both in my design skills and in my photography skills. Lately I've been photographing cards for the Believe Notes Holiday Line - I don't have an arsenal of props, so I have to try to make the pictures look good without much prop-age (is that a word? It is now!). I've been using a simple ribbon as my prop, and I think the cards have come out nice. But really, I give most of the credit to my camera for taking nice pictures. Although, the camera doesn't just take pictures without any futsting around on my end. So, here are a few things I've learned about taking pictures of stationery:

1- Use a decent camera. I have a Canon Rebel DSLR
2- Adjust your white balance. This allows the pictures to come out truer to life. Take a picture of something pure white, under the same lighting you'll be using to photograph your stationery, and then use that solid white to adjust your white balance.
3- Have a solid background that isn't white. Some designers can pull off white backgrounds, I can't. I use a slightly textured cream linen fabric and it adds just enough to the pictures without taking away from the designs.
4- Simple props are good. I use ribbon, candle holders, pens etc. My fellow Minted designer, Kimberly of Daily Sip Studios has a great blog post about how to use props. Check it out, learn it, live it. I'm working on it, too!
5- Make sure your lighting is good. I take pictures during the day, next to a nice big window, with three extra lighting sources, all covered in tracing paper to help make things all nice and soft. I try to minimize the shadows, since I want all the focus on my product and not on other contrasty things.
6- Take lots of pictures. I take on average 20 pictures of each design, from all angles.
7- Don't be afraid to digitally enhance. I'll brighten up some pictures, correct warmth and smudge out address information. Who cares? Do you? I don't. In fact, I'm glad I do it!
8- Oh, and lastly, make sure to take plenty of close up detail shots along with some shots of your entire suite/product. Don't be afraid to have things going off the screen, it looks nice and adds interest!

Here are some pictures I've taken recently:

Business Cards using tacks as props

thank you cards using a rock, antique spoons and a candle holder with pens

holiday card with simple red ribbon