A Picture is Worth A Thousand Dollars

Photography Tips That Sell Your Products Online

By Meredith Keller
Merkell, Inc. Founder and President

So you've got this great product. It's beautiful and loaded with wonderful features. How come no one is it ordering from your website? Maybe it's because your photos (for lack of a better term) suck. Shooting wonderful product pictures is at least half the battle in selling products online. Your customer can't see how beautiful the item is in real life, so you need pictures that represent the item's beauty accurately. This means shooting clear, sharp, crisp photos. This also means learning to retouch them. Staging a photo shoot properly with good lighting is also important.

Your first order of business is to learn to use your camera properly. Get familiar with its exposure settings and macro mode and how to turn the flash on and off. Read your camera manual (no matter how boring it is), and practice shooting pictures of small objects and people.

Once you feel comfortable working with your camera, you need to set up a great environment for shooting your pictures. If you are shooting objects like furniture or clothing, make sure you've got a really well-lit space to take your pictures in. Shadows will make your photos look murky and gray, and this is not what you want. Natural light is great for this type of photography, but if you can't get that, bring in lighting sources that really light up your space well. I've seen excellent results come from lighting a room with several high wattage halogen lights. If you are shooting objects, a light box is a very good idea. You can control glare and light level this way and keep weird shadows at bay. There are tons of wonderful online tutorials about how to make a light box, but here are a few I like:

Once you've got your camera figured out and your light box set up, you will want to think about how to stage your product pictures. A plain white background is suitable for most product pictures, but it's not your only option. Many online sellers add interest to their product images by staging their products with other accessories. For example, a person selling teacups might stage his or her cups on a table with a tea pot and some tea bags. A person selling espresso scented soap might shoot a picture of the soap on top of a pile of coffee beans. Sometimes just an abstract colorful background is enough to add interest to your picture. Here are a few examples of staged product photos that do what I've described.

360 Skincare really whets the consumer's appetite for luxurious skincare with this facial masque by arranging the jar of product amid fresh lavender and aloe leaves. The staging in this photograph helps pique sensory interest by pairing the product (which the consumer is unfamiliar with) with scented objects we have all encountered before.		Stelladesigns adds interest to these earrings by using newspaper classifieds as a backdrop. The contrast created by the monochromatic backdrop helps the red in the earrings pop.
Skinny La Minx really invites her customers to imagine owning this set of cloth napkins by staging them as part of a cozy afternoon of tea and knitting. This picture really tells a story about the product.		Kim Westad depicts her serving dish in use. Showing the item as a component of a swanky cocktail party helps the consumer evision using her product for their own parties at home.

So now that you've followed all the steps above, your camera is full of great photos. Think they're ready to go on your website? Not so fast. Even product photos shot under the best of conditions need a little love before they can go online. Familiarize yourself with a program like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. Learn to manipulate your photos so that they really show your product off. Sit at your computer with the actual product next to you. Do the colors in the photo accurately represent the product's real colors? Does the photo look shadowy or murky or gray? Adjusting the photo's contrast, hue, color balance, brightness and levels are great ways to really make your photo pop. Adobe Photoshop has a wonderful feature called Curves that can be applied to make most pictures look just a little bit better. Below are product photos before and after going through some Photoshop tweaks. See the difference?

If you can't master product photography and retouching, seriously consider hiring someone who can. Having great product photos is necessary to be a successful internet retailer, and the money you think you're saving doing a mediocre job yourself is money you're losing in sales to customers.

Did this article answer your questions? If you're interested in a personalized consulting session to help you address the issues covered in this article please contact us to schedule a consultation.

Return to the Merkell, Inc. Help Center