DIY product photos or a photographer, when to pay for help
A phone and window light are enough for many products, but a few situations justify paying someone, and this helps you decide using value, volume and impact.
Photos are the first thing a shopper judges. They cannot touch your product, so the picture does all the work. That makes it fair to ask whether you should shoot yourself or pay a professional. Here is a way to decide without guessing.
Three questions to ask
- How valuable is each product? A higher-priced item gives the shopper more reason to look carefully. A weak photo of an expensive piece is a bigger loss than a weak photo of a low-priced one.
- How many products do you have? Twenty items is a day of work for a professional or a few weekends for you. Two hundred items is a different problem.
- How much does the photo drive the sale? Jewellery, sarees and food depend heavily on how they look. A refill pack of a known item depends less on it.
When DIY is enough
Many products photograph well with a phone, a window and a plain background. You can learn this in a weekend. Start with how to photograph products with only a phone, how to use window light for product photography and how to make a DIY white background. If your catalogue changes often, doing it yourself also means you can shoot a new item the day it arrives.
When paying someone is sensible
- Your product is hard to shoot, such as shiny metal, glass or fine jewellery.
- You need a model or lifestyle scenes you cannot stage.
- You are about to launch a large range at once.
- You tried and the photos still look uneven.
What to do if you hire
I will not quote what photographers charge, because rates differ by city and by work. Do this instead.
- Ask to see a few samples of the same product type.
- Agree how many final photos per product you will receive.
- Share a short list of the angles you want, as in which angles to shoot for every product.
- Ask about the right to use the images on your store and on Instagram.
- Start with one product as a trial before booking all of them.
A middle route
You can pay for the hard few and shoot the rest yourself. Hire someone for your hero product and your homepage banner, then match the look of the others with a consistent background and light. See how to keep a consistent look across your catalogue and how to build a simple brand photo style guide.
A quick test
Look at your product page on your own phone. Would you buy from it? Ask a friend who has never seen your product what it is made of and how big it looks. If they cannot tell, the photos are failing, whether you or someone else took them.
Money spent on photos is not wasted if they stop returns caused by wrong expectations. Start where the biggest gap is, and improve from there.