Photography is rarely a ‘point and shoot’ job. Truthfully, taking effective product and brand photos involves a lot of consideration, research, and effort. At Companion Design Studio, we are no stranger to the hard work required to capture high-quality photos.
In honour of World Photography Day 2023, which falls on the 19th August each year, we are sharing five of our top tips for taking attractive product and brand photos.
1. Use consistent lighting
A tragic flaw in many photography cases is lack of consistency when it comes to light. Lighting can serve many purposes beyond simply illuminating a product. For example, the intensity and positioning of lighting can greatly impact on the overall look and feel of a brand.
At Companion Design Studio, we like our images to appear light and crisp. So, we often use bright white studio lighting to reflect this branding choice, and make our photography pop. Some businesses may prefer lighting with a slight yellow hue, while others embrace the shadows for a dark and moody look. Ultimately, whatever your photography preferences for your business, consistent lighting choices will help to give a unified feel across all of your branded photography elements, creating a unified presence for your business.
2. Adjust your focus
Getting your product shot in perfect focus is crucial for effective photography. Editing your way to perfect focus is incredibly challenging, and the capability of software that allow this never compares to the real shot.
Therefore, it is very important that a photographer checks that their focus is correctly adjusted when a shot is taken to negate the need for over editing. It can also help to take a number of different shots, using varying points of focus, which will result in numerous options to choose from when slimming down to the final selection.
3. Check the outskirts of your shot
No one likes an unwanted photobomber in their shot! So, make sure to check all corners of your photo for unwanted objects or props before taking the snap. If you feel that there is any possibility of needing to remove a prop from your photo, make sure to take a few shots without these extra items, in order to give yourself more options to choose from.
Using tools such as photoshop and other editing software should preferably be viewed as a last resort when it comes to removing unwanted objects from images. Not only is using photoshopping tools an additional task that requires more time, but removing objects digitally can often leave unwanted shadows, blurriness or distortion on an image, which can affect the whole look of a picture.
4. Keep your product shots as clean as possible
As established, using editing tools such as photoshop can be very time consuming. Therefore, when photographing product pictures, it is wise to keep background props to a minimum, unless you are certain that you want something in the background of your shot. Additionally, ensuring that your products are adequately clean (for example, free from finger prints and dirt or dust) will minimise the time that you spend editing the final shot, making the whole process far easier.
5. Snap as many shots as you can
Realistically, capturing the perfect shot is no easy feat. Even if you spend minutes lining up your angle, setting the tripod just so, and positioning your props, the golden shot rarely comes first try. So, don’t be afraid to spam click that capture button. Often, it’s only when you’re sat in the bright lighting of your office, sifting through a file of near-identical shots that a photographer can identify the perfect snap.
So, click the capture button as much as your storage allows, and give yourself as many chances as possible to achieve the perfect shot.
In summary, photography is a challenging task, and it can be difficult to get together a series of high quality, well-lit and correctly focused photos. If you need a bit of extra support with your photography, our experienced team of designers are on hand to help! If you want to learn more about what we can do for your business, get in contact today.
