If there is one thing you should master when running a small business, it should definitely be product photography! Customers are more inclined to buy something if the image is high quality. This gives them a sense that not only is the photography excellent, but so is the product. A study shows that 93% of consumers consider product photos to be one of the top deciding factors in a purchasing decision.

Now that we know how important good photos are, let's talk about how to take them using your cell phone! I take almost all my photos for my listings and social media posts on my iPhone. There are some occasions when I will use a higher end camera, but I will get more into that later further in the blog! 

What will you need to take high quality pictures?

LIGHTING:

Good lighting is a MUST! If you don't have good lighting, your photos will not turn out. You can use natural lighting (like outside or in front of a window), but you will even see discrepancies in these pictures. 

I recommend getting a photo booth or a ring light to create a uniform look throughout all your photos.

Impact Photo Pro LED Booth 400

I invested in the Impact Photo Pro LED Booth 400. It is 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. It is fairly expensive ($300), but for the amount that I use it, I would buy it over and over again. It has been one of the best things I have purchased for my small business! In the photo booth I can take flat lays, hanging pictures and even portraits since a person is able to fit in the booth! It comes with 8 LED magnetic light strips that you can move around to capture the perfect lighting. The main thing I love about my Impact photo booth is I can take photos anytime during the day! I am never chasing daylight which allows me to take pictures whenever I want to (even at night!)

If you don’t want to invest in an expensive photo booth, there are other options as well!

Ulanzi Ring Light 

This is my favorite ring light! You can change the color of the lights from a warm tone to a cooler tone and adjust the brightness. This is helpful when shooting portraits or selfies! It's also very beneficial for any jewelry sellers out there. You can get great pictures of necklaces, earrings etc. on your models! 

Emart Tabletop Light Box

If the Impact Photo Pro LED Booth 400 is out of your price range, but you still want a photo booth set up, you can buy a table top photo studio! If you are photographing larger products this may not work for you, but it works excellent for jewelry, soap, stickers, keychains, makeup or anything smaller in size.  

 

ADOBE LIGHTROOM MOBILE APP:

Lighting is crucial because it makes this step a lot easier! Once you have your raw photos, they aren't ready to upload yet. First we need to edit them! My favorite editing software is the Adobe Lightroom Mobile App. This app has a lot of fun features you can mess with and you can even create your own presets! I also love that it is mobile so you can do everything directly from your cell phone. In my experience it is WAY easier to buy a preset and apply it to all of your photos rather than editing each one individually. I purchase my presets from Alice Photo Studio. She always has great deals running and has the prettiest presets! Having one preset that you use for all your photos also automatically makes your social media feed match! If you have consistent lighting your presets will also look the same on all of your photos creating a uniform look.  

Before Preset

After Preset

With the right lighting and Adobe Lightroom, these two things should give you the tools to take stunning product photos for your business page and social media! As I mentioned before, I take almost all my photos on my iPhone, but I will also sometimes use my DSLR camera!

NIKON D3400

The only time I ever use my camera is when I am shooting portraits of people. If I am doing a photo shoot outside of using my photo booth, I will always take these on my camera since the quality is much better! I use the Nikon D3400 camera with the 35 mm lens for portraits.

 

I hope these tips can help you upgrading your photography game! All the equipment and apps I  mentioned above are linked if you click on their names!