Easy Product Photography DIYs with Destiny of Frames by Destiny

Posted by Taylor Smith
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If you feel like your online shop is struggling, your product photography could be one reason why you're not getting the sales you want!

Having high-quality clean, and clear product photos are critical to having a successful online shop, but...it's not easy and it's not natural to anyone (including us!). It takes a lot of practice!

These four easy tricks to easy DIY product photography can help make your shop stand out.

In this episode, we interview Destiny Rowell, a brand & lifestyle photographer from Southern Alabama, who shares her inspiring journey from photographer to graphic design teacher back to full time creative photographer again...

and she also shares some excellent dos' & don'ts of product photography, and how you can easily DIY and inexpensively improve your photos for Etsy!

This is an interview that we think you’re going to love.

Listen here or keep reading below for product photography tips for Etsy sellers!

What Makes a Good Product Photo

You don't have to be a professional photographer to take great photos of your products.

You just need to know the basics and have the tools and confidence to make your products look amazing.

Here are some of our top tips for great product photos:

#1 Natural Light

This is our number one tip!

Natural light is so important. It doesn't matter if you're taking photos on your phone, a professional camera, or even a Polaroid.

If you have lousy lighting, it can ruin everything.

Natural lighting is actually the easiest to work with, so find a place in your home or take it outside and snap some photos of your products. You’ll be surprised at how well they turn out in natural lighting.

If you’ve already got your lighting figured out, keep reading! You don’t want to miss the rest of our tips.

#2 Crisp Clean Representation

You have fantastic lighting, but you still need to make sure that your photo stands out without being too busy.

Most of the time, you need props in photos to help create a visually interesting photo and to show the scale of the product, but our best tip here is to be very intentional with the props you choose.

Getting caught up in creating flat lays and “setting the scene” for your product is easy. However, putting too many or too few props in your photos is a very common mistake we see with Etsy shops.

When it comes to photography, you want to ensure that your audience can tell what you're selling by looking at the photo.

If your customers have to study the photo to find your product or guess what services you provide, you probably have too much going on in your photos.

BTW - you also want to avoid using filters or editing tools that don't accurately represent your products.

Often, less is better!

#3 Attention to Detail

It's super easy to get hyperfocused on what you're taking a photo of.

Still, you'll want to ensure that the area you're using to take your product photos is clean and that there's nothing weird in the background.

There's nothing worse than taking pictures only to find a light socket in the background that throws off the vibe.

You'll also want to make sure that your product works with where you're shooting it.

For example, if you're shooting a product in your kitchen and are using your kitchen as a backdrop, make sure that it makes sense with the product.

I would only take a photo of a sticker with the kitchen in the background if it were a cooking or kitchen-related sticker! It wouldn't make a ton of sense to shoot photos of tree stickers in a kitchen, for example, or in a kids' bedroom. So, this is why you'll see almost all of our product photos of our nature stickers are taken outside, in nature.

#4 Photo Editing

You do not need to be a photographer to use photo editing software. There are so many different platforms and apps out there that you can use to edit your photos!

Lightroom is one of our favorites and is insanely easy to use. You can use it on your desktop and phone, and it's a free app which is even better.

When you use an app like Lightroom, you can easily adjust things like lighting, shadow, contrast, and sharpness and crop your photos. You can also change the color to make sure things pop more in your photos.

Our Final Thoughts on Product Photography

Our favorite tips for being super successful with your product photography are to use natural lighting and to keep it simple!

Don't overcrowd your photos with props, and make sure the photos actually make sense (set the right stage).

Customers want an accurate depiction of what they're buying, so don’t go crazy with the editing tools and tell a story with your photos!

And one final tip...it takes a LOT of practice to master product photography. Don't get discouraged when the first few times you take photos, they're not perfect. the truth is, your photos do need to be high quality to get sales on Etsy, but they do not have to be perfect.

Stick with the natural light and keep things simple and you'll get better with the more photos you take!

You can also find Destiny on her website here

And on Instagram: @framesbydestiny