This week we continued on our ecommerce journey for CreativeLines.space by starting to take photography for our new store. When it came to taking photography we had a few options in mind, which we want to share with you to hopefully help when thinking of taking your own photos for your store. Its important to remember that good photos will make your website really shine and give your customers confidence in your store. However, bad photography can really drive people away from the moment they land on your storefront. So where did we think to look for product photography…?
A very common approach and one that comes to most people’s minds is hiring a pro. Although its going to cost you some money, a professional photographer will take and usually edit photos to perfection ready to be added to your website right away. As we’ve said, great photos will have a huge impact on your stores appearance and its worth investing in that. Professional photographers understand lighting, exposure, and the best positions and backgrounds for your photos to be taken on. Don’t underestimate their skillsets; a good photographer knows what there doing.
Sometimes there’s just not enough budget to hire a pro and you have to find a more cost effective way of taking your photos. Luckily our phone cameras have come a long way and for some stores, taking photos of your products on your iPhone may just do the trick. You’ll have to think about lighting and positioning yourself as well as editing, so you may need to do quite a few trial runs to get the right settings. You also need to make sure you take all of your product photos at exactly the same angle. There’s nothing worse than looking at a collection of products and some are straight on and some are at a funny angle. If you have a look at Amazon or your local tech store you’ll find tripods specifically designed for iPhones, which will allow you to take the perfect shot for each of your products time and time again like. Click here to see an example.
Due to time constraints we went down the route of using our iPhone and you can see the quality of our photos once we launch next week at www.creativelines.space.
One area people seem to miss out on is using the resources around them more effectively. We contacted a local universities photography society and instantly had a pool of up-and-coming photographers with more than appropriate equipment available to take our photos. The pricing was much cheaper than hiring a pro and that’s reflected in there experience but they could be just what you need for your next photoshoot. Also we like to think your giving students some real life projects to work on to help them grow there portfolios. Unfortunately for our project time was of the essence as we are building and launching a store in 3 weeks (see Masterclass Series Part 1) and by the time we thought of this route it left us too little time to use them.
As long as your photography looks the part in the end it doesn’t matter what route you go down, but don’t give it the attention it needs otherwise you’ll pay the price in the end.
From all the team at Smart Cookie Design
