5 Tips To Create A Setup For Product Photography At Home

Every business and freelancer is facing a tough time due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the never-ending quarantine. We have to adjust to the quarantine and think of a way to shoot at home, don’t we?

I have started taking up product photography projects that I do at home.

In this post, we’ll be talking about how you can do it too. Before we get to the main point of discussing how to create a setup, there are prerequisites to talk about first.

Take a step back and look at your portfolio. Have you done product photography before? If yes, great! If no, that’s okay too.

Check out product photography examples on Pinterest and Behance. Both are great platforms but opt for Behance when you are looking to take your work a notch up.

You have to decide which products you can shoot comfortably at home. For instance, I prefer haircare/skincare products, stationery items, etc. This is a picture I shot for Fixmycurls at home.

Ask these things from the brand you’re working with

• Always ask them for reference pictures that show the kind of setup and styling they are looking for. The more efficient the communication is, the better it is for the brand and you as a Photographer.
• After seeing the reference pictures, create a mood board of your own inspired from it. Choose the picture for the mood board carefully. Only put the pictures which you think you can deliver. Share it with the brand for approval.
• Ask them where the picture will be used. Charge higher for pictures that will be used on a website or at multiple places over a long duration of time. Also, this will tell you the ratio in which you should shoot your photographs.
• Color palettes are important. Discuss what colors the brand has in their entire vibe and use those. If you use earthy tones in a brand that’s all about vibrant colors, it will be a bummer.
• Get everything in writing. If the discussion happened over a call, follow it up with summarizing everything in a mail to the brand. If the brand says you didn’t deliver what they asked for, you can’t say you said this, you said that I remember.

Also Read: Single Flash Setup: How To Nail It!

How to nail Product Photography at home

Product photography set up at home will make things very convenient and let you shoot even in quarantine. You won’t need to hire a studio in order to shoot. It will be easier to bring out the ideas in your mind to life.

If there’s no extensive styling needed, you can manage the things you have around the house.

Some basic items that you will need

• A camera, I use Sony Alpha A7iii with a 28-70mm lens.
• A sturdy tripod, I recommend Digitex DTR520, Simpex 540-TM. They have an extension rod with them that lets you set the camera horizontally parallel to the surface for flatlays.
• For backdrops, you can use items like bedsheets, scarves, succulents, curtains, wooden tables or stools etc.
• Natural sunlight is your best friend when shooting at home.
• If you want to soften the harsh sunlight, use a diffuser.

I have curated budget-friendly props and backdrops for product photography on my Amazon storefront, check it out here. In my Amazon storefront, under the product photography collection you can find the following products:

• Glass jars
• Wooden bowls
• Mirror and wooden trays
• Flower vases
• Home decor items
• White bedsheet
• Battery LED fairy lights
• Fancy paper clips
• Tripod
• Artificial plants
• Pastel sheets
• Candles
• Ceramic cups and plates
• Mirrors
• Artificial flowers
• Succulents

Where should you place or create the setup?

Choose a place in your home that gets abundant sunlight, it can be either direct or indirect. Ideally, I would say on a table or on the floor near a window or a door that opens to the balcony.

Natural light is your best choice for a perfectly lit-up shot.

When wanting to shoot harsh light product pictures, just spread out an ivory sheet or a bedsheet in the balcony and take the pictures. Shoot a little under-exposed so that the highlights are not blown out because of the sunlight.

You can always get back details from the shadows in post-processing but the details lost in the highlights can’t be brought back. While editing on Adobe Photoshop, pull up the blacks and shadows, use a curves layer and a levels layer to bring back the details, and adjust the darker areas in your images.

In Adobe Lightroom, you can pull up the blacks and shadows in the same way. Gradients are a great way to add some light into the darker regions, or even a radial filter or a brush.

Also Read: Take Texture Shots in Product Photography With PERFECTION! | GarimaShares

Remember the purpose of the picture

Is the brand going to use these images on their online store/website or on social media platforms like Instagram? Create a setup keeping in the mind the Instagram ratios available, 1:1 (1080 x 1080px), 4:5 (1080 x 1350px) and 1.9:1 (1080 x 608px).

Before taking a shot, think about versatile it is. Can it be both shared as a post and cropped for Instagram stories? Or is it just appropriate for a website banner because the setup is too wide?

For the 4:5 Instagram ratio, keep some space blank on the top and bottom of the frame. Those will probably get cropped out finally. A quick hack for this, which I use every single time when I am making creative setups for product photography is:

First frame the shot with your smartphone and take a picture. Crop it in the Instagram ratio on your phone itself. It takes hardly a minute to crop it in the ratio needed using an app like Snapseed. This way you can see how much of your setup will be included in the 4:5 ratio or 1:1 ratio.

The product has to be in focus, that’s non-negotiable

Don’t use props or backdrops that are too fancy and take the limelight off your main product. The picture should sell the brand’s product eventually not the props. Refrain from using props that are of very loud colors. Keep it subtle.

Double-check or triple-check even to ensure that you have a pinpoint focus on the product. It might not be that differentiable on a camera’s screen, but even a bit of blur will show up when the picture is put up on a website. Focus can’t be compromised. No matter how perfect your setup is, if the product is not sharp enough, it will be a waste. That’s a harsh truth.

Also Read: How To Do Any Kind Of Color Grading In Lightroom

It’s time to jazz up and start styling

Start off with styling only after you have a mood board ready in your smartphone for reference.

Pinterest is a quick and easy way to find out inspiration. But be inspired by them, don’t copy them blindly.

People hire you for your personal style and work ethic and not for copying things off the Internet.

You might come across some pictures that you absolutely love but you don’t have those exact props. Worry not. Manage with what you have.

Don’t dishearten yourself over not having those expensive brass or mirror props to make your picture look expensive.

Those props enhance the overall look and feel of the picture, I agree. But they are not an absolute necessity. You can invest in them later when you get a handful of projects under your umbrella.

In this picture below, I used a white wooden board as the surface, a book, and some planters I already had around the house. Topping off with some accessories and a watch. These are not uncommon things.

Add some iced tea in the glass and this can pass off as a product shot for a coffee brand.

This picture is of a lemon tart, by ToPastryWithLove. First of all, I would like to mention that if you live in Delhi and are looking for some mouthwatering desserts and sandwiches, you have try this one out. No kidding. They have gluten-free and vegan options available.

As it’s a lemon tart, I have used lemons as one of the props. To create a sense of depth, I put some flowers near the camera lens and a book at the back. The flowers at the front create an additional layer that makes the picture more intriguing. Try creating layers of your own.

Minimalistic approach with light

You can be short on props but you can never be short on light. If are short on budget and don’t have many props around, use the light as your prop. Create interesting shadows with leaves, a door half-open, or a curtain.

Also Read: How To Get Your Photographs Published in Magazines

Go an extra mile with stop motion

Wow the brand with your product photography skills by creating a quirky stop motion. For this one, you will need a tripod.

Set your camera to take burst shots if you are taking a stop motion of a movement, for example, pouring water or a flickering candle. If you are planning on a stop motion where the items move around, in and out of the frame, set the camera on a tripod.

For this, you don’t need to take burst shots. Single shots taken at different times, after you make one slight movement will do the job. In the end, combine all the pictures one after the other in the same sequence in which they were shot in Photoshop to create a GIF.

Bonus tips!

How to contact the brands: Don’t shy away from dropping a message in the DM and sending a mail too. It just shows that you are eager and actively looking to collaborate. Keep a portfolio or a pdf ready beforehand to send to the brands. You can create a free online portfolio on Behance, only upload pictures from your paid projects on it.

If you haven’t worked with any brands as of now, put a collection of your best works in a pdf instead. Make it a bit creative and use Canva’s A4 templates to design this.

Save your best works: Keep the pictures that you are proud of in focus. If you have posted it on Instagram, add a link to it in your mail. only add the links to the pictures which are relevant to the brand. If it is home decor, send only the pictures of home decor. Not of coffee even if it’s your best picture. What would a home decor brand do with an amazing picture of coffee?

Keep the mail ready: Save the content that you send to the brands in a document so that you can copy-paste it anytime. Don’t send too many emails at once or it can be marked as spam. Use the schedule later feature of Gmail to schedule 5-6 mails a day.

You have to make it as easy as possible for the brand to see you as a Photographer. Add your contact details, portfolio, and Instagram profile.

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