3 Reasons Why Product Photography Is Deceptively Difficult

If you enjoy taking photos and tinkering around with depth and focus, you can become a product photographer in very little time. It's a profession that has been on the rise, especially in emerging economies where more and more small businesses are cropping up every single day. But there's' more to it than just pointing a camera and clicking the button. You have to know what you're doing in terms of product positioning, depth, distance, angle, lighting, etc. All of this becomes apparent when you actually have a real product in your hands and you're trying to figure out what the best angle is to catch the eye and draw it in. so here’s how you begin this journey.

Your kit
First off, you need to look for the best camera hire options. They will have some cameras like the Canon EOS series and the C300 series too. These are some of the most flexible cameras you can hire for any session you're having. You will also need to hire equipment that will block and capture natural and artificial light. So reflectors and darker clothes like throws are needed to give you the balance of light you desire. Make sure that the materials are high-quality, so you don’t have flimsy lighting that can easily bend or a camera stand that will vibrate or shudder at the slightest touch

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Know your product
Just like you need to know your subject when photographing people you need to know your product too. If it's a bottle of wine, the glass is going to hide a lot of that natural redness of the wine, so you need to brighten the green glass and allow some of that vibrancy to shine through. If you’re doing a bottle of perfume, you need to not overpower it and allow the color of the perfume to radiate naturally. Yet, if you’re photographing a pair of jeans, you need to get it from all angles, thus, you need to keep the lighting as consistent as possible, as you spin the product around. Get to know the brand that made the product, what kind of attitude were they intending on giving the product? Some brands want straightforward photography to just show the product as it is, others want to accentuate the angles of the product with the use of lighting and space.

A good place
You obviously need to take photos where there is as little interference from the outside world as possible. Therefore consider hiring a studio or perhaps make a photography studio at home. You need a neutral backdrop so that you can manipulate light as easy as possible. It should be a place where you have total freedom to get messy and try new things. A spare bedroom could be good but control of natural light is the main issue. So you need to either block it out or select a room which has no natural light at all like a basement or garage.

Product photography is deceptively difficult. It looks simple enough but once you get into it, it's challenging in many surprising ways.