Nothing is more critical for an up and coming brand than to improve its marketing strategy. And a great way to get your marketing right is with content, more specifically, product photographs.
Photographic material conveys the brand’s message and quality to potential customers.
Here are some handy merchandise photography tips to get started with your campaign, whether for yourself or a client.
Get the Right Gear
While photography is all about light and composition, having the right gear can go a long way to get the desired results.
Obviously, having a good camera and some sharp lenses are a must, but don’t forget your tripod. Speedlights can also be extremely useful for controlling shadows and creating great images.
Of course, you can always use natural lighting. However, artificial light like softboxes and speedlights can help you better manipulate the scene’s lighting to get the results you’re after. You can use a reflector with a studio light to correctly highlight the object.
Make the Message Concise and Clear
Your merchandised products need to demand action [1] and place your message clearly in your potential customer’s minds. For this reason, you might not want to play around with the design or angles too much. The content should not be misleading.
Place the product in front of a white screen or a white sheet fixed on a surface. Place the product or the object in the middle and in clear sight. Make sure that the product or object is conveying the message well. It should be clear what the photograph entails and its objectives.
Mind the Lighting
Accurate lighting and shadows are essential for taking the best merchandise pictures. For product photography, the focus is on the actual object. Lighting can make or break a product photo.
When using studio lights, ensure that your speedlights aren’t casting harsh shadows onto the product. Using softboxes and reflectors can help you better control shadows and make them softer.
Edit and Balance
If you’re shooting product images, hopefully, you’re shooting in RAW format. The RAW file format is not a final image and needs to be developed. Just like undeveloped rolls of film.
Product pictures are a brand’s image, and you need to give them a consistent look and feel. Although good photography may not need to be edited very much, consistency can prevent having holes in the marketing strategy and provide a cohesive brand aesthetics.
You can choose from a wide range of editing tools and apps to edit your images. We’re big fans of Lightroom Classic [2] and Photoshop for this.
Hire Help
Getting ready for a campaign with merchandised materials requires a lot of planning and implementation. And if you don’t have the necessary help on the team, there is just so much you can do to make it in time.
Hiring outside help is very common in product photography. You can reach a reliable firm that provides custom photo gifts [3], for example. With their help, you can get your pictures printed on any object of your choice, including t-shirts, mugs, frames, etc. You can present some of these merchandise products to customers for free to get ahead of the game.