5 Skincare Product Photography Tips, Get Creative!

When it comes to skincare product photography, the setup and aesthetics vary a lot depending on the product you’re shooting. In this post, we’ll be talking about shooting skincare products.

How you approach a Product Photography project with your ideas depends on a variety of things like:

• What is the brand’s color palette?
• What vibe are they going for?
• Where will the pictures be used?
• Do they want the focus on solely the product or they want to showcase how it can be used too?

5 Helpful Tips for shooting skincare products

1. Use props related to the ingredients of the product

Using the ingredients in skincare product photography not only makes the picture more interesting visually, but it also sends a message that the skincare product is natural.

Here’s an image I shot for the brand Kimirica. As you can read on the label, the conditioner has aloe vera and green apple as its main ingredients.

So I have used aloe vera and green apple as props in their photographs. I personally love photographing aloe vera because it brings a pop of color to any picture.

Aloe vera works great in different forms, such as a whole aloe vera leaf, small pieces, or in a gel form.

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

2. Try going minimal, it always works

Minimal shots let the skincare products take the stage and have all of the spotlights. The key thing to take care of is the light.

Too many props can sometimes make the attention deviate from the product to the props around it. But again, this is very subjective, depends on the type of skincare products you’re shooting.

Checkout different brands on Instagram and you will notice that a lot of skincare product photography revolves around minimally styled shots.

Since the setup is minimal, the only thing you can use to beautify your image is light. Play with natural or artificial light.

The shot you see above was taken in natural light, paired with a reflector to fill in the shadows.

It totally depends on what you’re looking for. If you want the harsh shadows that natural hard light creates then don’t use a reflector.

Harsh shadows give an amazing graphic look to your photographs, like in this one:

Also Read: Best YouTube channels for learning flatlay photography

3. Create interesting shadows with leaves

Different types of leaves such as Monstera can create quite interesting shadows when light passed through them.

You can use these kinds of shadows in the background to fill up the empty space around the product.

It is a subtle way of adding creativity to your skincare product’s shot.

The farther your leaf is from the setup, the bigger will be its shadow cast on the setup.

Let’s see some examples:

4. Get comfortable with artificial light

Although natural daylight is great, it is not exactly dependable.

You can’t postpone a shoot because the day is cloudy and the weather is not in your favor.

Having an artificial light that mimics daylight gives you a whole lot of flexibility. You can move your light around as you like.

I recommend using Godox SL60W. It is a pocket-friendly option that does the job pretty neatly.

When used as is, it can work as a hard natural light and when paired with a softbox (Godox SB-UE 80cm / 32 Inch Portable Octagon Honeycomb Grid Umbrella Speedlite Softbox with Bowens Mount), it gives a bright yet diffused look.

5. Use bubbles

If you are shooting something that can create foam or bubbles, why not use bubbles in your photos too?

You can either take a still shot or even try out a stop motion with bubbles flying in and out of the frame.

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