E-commerce
Product photography that sells, on a small budget
A window, a sheet of paper and a phone will beat most agency photography, if you get four things right.
Product photography is the highest-return work in a small shop and the most commonly outsourced badly. You do not need a studio. You need consistent light and a few rules.
The setup
A north-facing window on an overcast day is a large soft light source and it is free. A sheet of white card as a background, a second sheet opposite the window bouncing light back into the shadows, and a phone on a small tripod. That is the whole kit and it will beat direct flash every time.
The four things that matter
- Consistency. Same background, same distance, same angle across the catalogue. A grid of consistent photos looks professional even when each individual shot is ordinary.
- Scale. At least one image showing the product held, worn or beside something familiar. Returns drop measurably when size is unambiguous.
- Detail. One close-up of texture, stitching, finish — whatever justifies the price.
- Context. One image of the product in use. This is the one that sells; the white-background shot only confirms.
Shoot for the crop
Leave space around the subject. Square for listings, portrait for social, landscape for banners — all cropped from one frame if you left room. Reshooting because everything was framed tightly is the most common avoidable cost.
Preparing the files
Export at roughly twice the display size for high-density screens, then compress. WebP at quality 80 is typically a fifth of the JPEG size at the same apparent quality. Name files descriptively — oak-desk-lamp-brass-side.webp — because that filename is a small ranking signal in image search and costs nothing.
Alt text
Write what the image shows for someone who cannot see it. It is an accessibility requirement, it helps image search, and it is one line per product.
When to hire someone
When the product is genuinely hard to photograph — glass, jewellery, anything reflective — or when you have a hundred SKUs and the consistency will not survive doing it yourself. For twenty products, a weekend by the window is a better investment than a day rate.
Working on something like this?
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