How to Snap the Perfect Product Photo at Home (Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash)

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then photos for your brand should have nothing but good things to say. Getting the right product photo is a testament to the quality of your product, but it conveys legitimacy and professionalism that can build trusting customer relationships. When customers look at your product, they’re looking for its quality and value. This trust in your product will translate into broader confidence in your brand and company mission. After all, you wouldn’t use a half-obscured picture of you in a messy room for your profile photo on a dating website, right? The same goes for your company’s products: the prettier they look, the more people will flock to them.

But seeing as now is not the ideal time to convene with photographers and collaborate on product photoshoots, you’ll have to get a little creative. Fortunately, there are a few critical tips for shooting the perfect product photo from your home’s comfort.

You might have guessed what product photography is by now, but for those who are still unclear, it’s photography that uses special techniques to highlight the attractiveness of a product and coax consumers to purchase it. Think of it as glamour shots for inanimate objects. How to snap the perfect product photo at home?

1. Choose Simple Backgrounds

You want to draw attention to the product and not the surrounding environment. For this reason, plain white backgrounds are usually the best for shooting product photos. If you’d like to add a pop of color, then consider monochrome backgrounds only; patterned backgrounds will distract the eye.

2. The Shooting Table

Once you’ve picked your background, you’ll need a shooting table. This table is pretty easy to make yourself, as you can use any table with a clean white sheet of paper on top. A popular choice for DIY shooting tables is a chair mounted sweep. You can make your own by clipping or taping a roll of craft paper to the back of a chair and then let it fall to the ground. Not only will your shooting table and background appear seamless in this way, but you can kill two birds with one stone.

3. The Light Tent

Another indispensable item for shooting product photos is the light tent. Light tents help distribute light evenly around the product so that it’s better illuminated. The good news is you can make your own at home pretty quickly. First, take a plastic container without the lid on and set it on its side. Next, you’ll take some white paper and tape it to the bottom. You can also tape some white paper on the sides, which will help diffuse the light even better.

If you can afford it, opt for artificial lighting. You’ll be able better to control the brightness and intensity of the light. If that’s not an option, then you place the light next to a window to take advantage of natural light.

For those interested in hiring a professional product photographer, go with Paul David Smith. Smith is based in Peterborough and Cambridge, UK, and has been shooting professionally since 2008. Visit his website to check out his portfolio and see a list of his services.