Product Photography Tips & Examples You Can Follow

Product photography is a crucial part of selling on your eCommerce website. Product photos provide necessary information to users and can entice them to make the purchase. 

We’ve previously discussed the benefits of good product photography, with shocking stats about the benefits. Today we want to show you that any kind of business can have good photography, despite the differing industries.

We’ll share examples from four different categories, why they work so well, and a few takeaways for you to follow. 

Product-Focused Photography  

For a lot of businesses, this is the cleanest and easiest way to have good product photography. If you're just starting out or are unsure of what will work best for you, product-focused is a pretty safe bet for most. Product focused photography often works best for:

• Consumer Packaged Goods
• Sites with large product lines
• Brands needing consistency 
• New Businesses
• Sites adding new products a lot 

Viva Doria

Viva Doria takes the approach of creating nearly identical product photos, using the same background and product size. With their wide range of products, keeping everything as uniform as possible makes it easy to browse on product overview pages.

Picnik Creamers 

Picnik Creamers uses really clean photography with backgrounds that match the product itself. This works well due to the brand personality as well as their small number of products.

What They Did Well & How You Can Copy It

One thing that both of these sites did well was to create uniform looking images. This puts the products in focus and allows users to focus directly on the item rather than what’s surrounding it.

To use this style for your site, you’ll need a set-up that allows you to easily take uniform photos with a plain background, or try your hand at photoshop, and edit product labels onto one product image and/or create a clean background. 

Lifestyle Product Photography

Using lifestyle product photography is a great way to get your users to imagine themselves using, wearing, or enjoying your product. They're more relational but can definitely take more work to make sure they look nice and cohesive. These tend to work best for: 

• Clothing/Garment businesses 
• Businesses with Access to Photographers & Models
• Sites with clean designs

Kryptek

Throughout the Kryptek site, you see lifestyle photos of their camo in use, making it easy for users to imagine themselves out hunting and wearing Kryptek gear themselves. Especially with their different types of camo, they show off the different environments in which their gear is made for, allowing the customers to see for themselves how well it works. 

Dainty Jewells

Dainty Jewell’s product photography matches their brand extremely well. Despite having differing backgrounds, they all have a familiar theme that matches the brand really well. They also feature pictures of groups of girls wearing different style dresses as well, showing how collections are cohesive and showing a wonderfully warm image reminding you of the joys of being with your close friends. 

Another notable feature of product photos is the number of different photos they share on the site of each garment. They do a great job showing off important details of each piece as well as have photos of different colors and at different angles, which allows the customer to really see how well the garment looks. 

What They Did Well 

Despite being on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of clothing, both of these do a great job giving potential customers a look at what they could look like wearing their clothes and gear. They show the clothes in action, on real people in real places that their target audience could also picture themselves in.

Detail Oriented Product Photos

When it comes to detail-oriented photos, it can be crucial for some businesses to share this info through photos. Detail-oriented product photography tends to work best with businesses in which: 

• Specs are important to the consumer
• The business has the ability to show multiple angles of the photo
• CAD/Mock-Ups of the product are available
• Higher dollar purchases

Ronix Wake

Ronix products not only look awesome, but they’re well thought out and the details are important. That means it’s important to display those details in the product photography as well as thorough information on product pages. Ronix offers a number of product photos for each one, giving users a good idea of the product at every angle. And while it’s not technically a product photo, it’s important to note that Ronix also includes product videos on their detail pages that not only share some important details but also gets the user stoked on buying one of their products. 

What They Did Well 

Their product photos and videos are tailored pretty specifically to their users. They know what parts of the product users want to see and easily display the information that’s important to them. 

Flat Lay Photos

Flat lay photos have become increasingly popular in the age of Instagram and bloggers and for good reason. They do a great job showing off products, building up a lifestyle around a brand, and sharing more details about a project. Flat lays can honestly work well for most businesses, especially ones who: 

• Have products that need to be "opened" or have content inside (ie subscription box, card, book)
• Are creating a "lifestyle" around a brand
• Businesses that have a heavy social presence 

Compendium

The overall brand at Compendium is extremely well designed and is definitely inspiring in and of itself. With a range of stationery products, books, cards, and signs, they do a great job showing off specific collections along with how well their products work together through flat lays. The flat lays themselves are inspiring, cute, and get you excited about the product itself.

Humble

Not only does Humble sell delicious-smelling all-natural deodorant, but they also have a great branding that ties into their natural aesthetic. The overview photos of Humble are clean and straightforward but offer a fun surprise when you hover over them, showing a flat lay of the ingredients inside. When you click further into the product detail pages, you’ll also be met with more photos showing off the products and their all-natural ingredients. 

What They Did Well

These flat lay photos tie very well to the products and brand behind each of these. Compendium works to inspire creativity so their crafty photos are inspiring, while Humble wants to appeal to their natural aesthetic so their flat lay showing the ingredients again plays very well to their brand. 

Product Photography Tips & What You Can Learn

Overall, one big theme we can see throughout all of these product photos is how they’re tailored to each of the specific needs and requirements the target audience is looking for. 

If you’re trying to figure out how to apply this to your brand, consider these questions: 

• What information is important to your user to get on your website? Can any of that be conveyed in your product photos? 
• What details and information can you show off through your product photos that you can’t show otherwise? (ie, how well a garment fits)
• How can you use your product photos and videos to get users even more interested and excited about your products? 
• What are your capabilities? Remember, at the end of the day it’s most important for you to at least have a high-quality straightforward product photo. As fun as it is to do flat lays if it’ll cause you to stress and your other product photos, it won’t be worth it.

Have a question about product photography or other ways to step up your eCommerce game? 

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