When you’re promoting your craft products, it’s absolutely essential to have great, well-lit photos. Crafters use product photos on websites, Etsy stores, printed materials, signage and more. Eye-catching photos can be the difference between a customer clicking through to your site, or moving on something else.

You can take great DIY product shots with just some simple tools and natural lighting. Lightcase Pro makes it even easier to take professional-grade photos in your home with a cell phone! Learn more and find out how you can enter to win a Lightcase Pro below.

Tips and Tricks for Great Product Photos

By Dominic of Lightcase Pro

Start with the PRODUCTS themselves.

Firstly get them looking their best – clean and polish them if necessary.

Next choose your BACKGROUND.

This will depend on your product and the look you are going for – do you want to create a mood or present it simply with a black, white or light grey background?

For an authentic feel, try to find an environment suitable for the product. For instance leather goods work well styled on a worn wooden table or use your work environment. For a very clean and simple look use white, light grey or black. Foam boards are useful as they stay clean and don’t crease.

For a LIGHT source, nothing beats natural lighting and it’s free, though use it wisely.

Find a spot indoors by a window with indirect light or outside in the shade or even directly outside on an overcast day. Position the Lightcase so that the light is diffused through the Polypropylene material. Look for a balanced light across the area of your shoot.

Choose the earlier part of the day for good overall colour.

 

CAMERAS – You can’t beat the quality of a good Digital SLR camera.

However you can take remarkably good photographs using a smartphone and a tripod if required. Make sure the camera is focused, the brightness is adjusted and the camera is steady. Resting the camera on top of the Lightcase stabilises the camera, but if you are shooting from the front you’ll get the best photos by using a tripod.

There are lots of great apps to edit your images with but you’ll get the best results starting with a great photo in the first place. Sometimes you can get camera shake when taking photos with your
smartphone – if so, try connecting your headphones and click the button on the headphones to release the shutter avoiding any camera shake.

LAYOUT – Make it interesting.

Flat lays are a great way of styling your work by introducing other objects to enhance your products and tell a story. Co-ordinate colour and textures of multiple objects. If you can ‘t get things to sit in place then stick a bit of blue tack to the undersides.

HAPPY shooting!! Have fun and get creative with your shots! Try placing the Lightcase flatlay over your hands at work and take a timelapse or instructional video to mix it up a bit and offer something different to your followers!

Enter to win a Lightcase Pro!

We’re giving away a Lightcase Pro to one lucky reader! Lightcase Pro is a professional pop-up photo studio, enabling you to take great product photos with ease.

Contest Rules:

• Commenting on this page will enter you to win the prize. Duplicate comments will be deleted and are not tallied.
• The winner will be selected at random from the comments on this page.
• You have until September 26, 2016 at 11:59 CST to leave your comment on this post. Comments after that will not be counted.
• Contest is open to anyone 18+ in the US and Canada. Void in Puerto Rico, the Province of Quebec and where prohibited.
• The winner will be contacted by the e-mail address provided in their account.

Answer This: Do you take your own product photos?