A picture is worth a thousand words! Do your images worth a thousand words?

I sincerely believe that a beautiful professional photo can work wonders for your company! In my life, I have seen on numerous occasions that a photo can make the difference between selling or not selling.

Let me introduce myself, Véronique Bégin, photographer and trainer at the Photography Training Studio, where we teach photography for beginners and professionals. Founded in 2009, we have always remained a small business, with a secretary and 4 qualified trainers/professional photographers, for a more personal and human service.

Now ask yourself: should I have my photos taken or do I take them myself. Ah! That's the question!

Regardless of your answer, we can help you.

Our service is highly personalized. Whether it's to create photos of your products, to set up your new equipment, to build a photo studio in your offices, to enhance the photos on your website, to correct already taken photos, or to photograph your team, your offices or an event, we can help. We can do all this and even show you how to do it yourself.

Here are the best tips for successful product photography

Nowadays, it's not necessary to invest in expensive equipment to achieve high-quality product photos. Here are the five key elements that will enable you to produce professional-quality images for your website:

the camera;
the studio setup;
lighting;
product arrangement;
post-production.

1. The camera

Today, everyone owns a camera, whether it's integrated into your smartphone, an old automatic camera, or a more sophisticated solution. You don't need the top-of-the-line camera to take beautiful photos. At a minimum, choose a camera that allows you to manually adjust exposure and aperture.

2. The studio setup

To create your photo studio, it's important to choose a room that offers enough space to install a white background and to move around easily to photograph your product from all angles. Your living room or any other room will do perfectly.

However, if you need to regularly organize photo sessions, we recommend setting up your studio in a dedicated room. Indeed, setting up and taking down equipment for each session can be time-consuming. It will also be easier to achieve consistent results if you work in a permanent studio.

To create your own studio, you need a room, a table, a large roll of white paper to create your background, and a roll of tape to secure your paper. If your subjects are stable objects, you need to get a tripod and continuous lights or flashes. If your subjects are humans, you don't need a tripod and you must absolutely use flashes.

3. The room and product lighting

Lighting is also one of the most important criteria in product photography. Without proper lighting, your images will not accurately represent your products. Various lighting techniques can be used to take digital product photographs, including continuous lighting or flash. The key point to remember is to avoid mixing different types of lighting. This way, you'll get more realistic images of your products.

If you're on a tight budget, we suggest using natural light from a window in your photo studio and reflectors. However, be aware that this option has its limits, especially in the evening, and it will be more difficult to achieve consistent results over time. We recommend investing in lighting as a priority. Two or three light sources will be more than enough, and you'll immediately notice the difference.

4. The product arrangement

To achieve good results and reduce the time spent in post-production, we advise you to carefully prepare your items before starting your photo session. Here are some useful tips:

Repair any imperfections such as stains or missing buttons.
Remove packaging, stickers, and labels and clean off any dust.
Use a steam iron to smooth out your textiles and remove creases.
Show the exact shape of your item: in the case of clothing, use a mannequin so that the customer can visualize the fit of the garment. For shoes, you can stuff them with paper or fabric, or use dental floss to hold the straps of sandals or high-heeled shoes as if they were being worn.

5. The post-production

In this last step, your product photos will need to be retouched by you following the image processing courses in Lightroom and/or Photoshop or by me, Véronique Bégin. You must at least ensure that the product's color is true to reality.

We also advise you to create a style guide for each product category so that your images are always processed in the same way. Also, make sure to adhere to the visual standards of online selling. Create your own style guide by defining the following characteristics for your product images: