Product photography is a big part of a small business owner's life when they create products. It's not an easy thing to have so many products and ensure that each one is photographed differently. It's why I have a large collection of props on hand.
The first step is to choose a product to photograph. I try to showcase a variety of products on social media and photographs are needed on my website.
Once I've chosen the product, I decide the theme of the props I want to use. I like to go with themes related to my business and products so the mains ones are nature, stationary and home décor.
I create a scene with the product as the focus of it. I want the props to complement the product and not overshow it. Sometimes it means that not even the entire prop is in the photograph.
Lighting is the other important part of it. My main source of light is sunlight coming from the open door in my home studio. I will often use a piece of white cardboard as a reflector to get more light into the scene. I may also use a camera mounted flash aimed at the ceiling to bounce diffused light back into the scene.
I take all of my product photographs on my SLR set on manual. I have the aperture set at f8 or higher to ensure that all of the scene that I want is in focus/sharp. As I generally handhold the camera, I have my shutter speed set at at least 1/80th of a second as it's the speed I know I can hold my camera without getting camera shake and making the photograph blurry.
Product photographs tend to be edited more as unlike nature photography where I don't want to change how nature created it. There's still a not of editing as I just want to correct the things I couldn't perfect in the studio.
It's a fun process of being able to create a scene that makes my products shine.
