Unlike other photography styles, you capture small scenes thus you can control a lot of variables in your setup. We’ll talk about lighting, composition, and unconventional techniques for product photography. Make this post your guide in creating stunning product photography!

Product Photography

Product photography is a photography style that is mainly used for advertising, marketing, and business. While other photography styles aim to inspire, product photography aims to sell the item. By capturing intricate details, selling points, and key features, product photography is posted in social media to attract buyers and future loyal customers.

Equipment for Product Photography

How expensive should your gear be in product photography? What is the necessary equipment to start practicing this photography style? Answers to these and more in this section of your guide to product photography.

1. Camera

Getting straight to the point, your phone camera is enough for capturing high quality product photos. Yes, there comes a time where you finally will need to get a DSLR camera. Prior to this, you are better off practicing and learning all the fundamentals in product photography with a phone camera.

The cameras in smartphones nowadays are high quality and prioritized in manufacturing. The phone you have now is enough for product photography. The more necessary equipment are those that follow. 

2. Lights

Lighting is extremely important in photography in general. More so in product photography since the details of the product pops out if given the proper lighting setup. Since product photography is on a smaller scale than portrait photography, you don’t need big studio lights. 

There are smaller lights available in the market with brands like Lumecube and Ulanzi. Ring lights, which are often used for doing makeup, can also serve as a cheap alternative to pricey lighting equipment. Get yourself three variable light sources you’re set. There are already a number of lighting techniques available to you with three lights. This is enough for starting with product photography and practicing your skills.

3. Setup and Props

Next, while not necessary, props can help sell a product. If a product is commonly paired with other items, adding a couple of props yields excellent results. While browsing on social media, you may have already noticed the dominance of smoke in product shoots. 

Smoke adds to the mood of the photo, this time either being freshly prepared or classy. Other elements to spice up your product photos are water droplets. This is typically used on beverages, showing how cold and refreshing these are. 

Majority of product photos also use the flat lay technique. This involves the use of a surface where products are laid down. Some surfaces are wood, marble, and fur. Flat lay can also be done using colored paper or cartolina. These offer plain colored backgrounds that can emphasize your products.

4. Tripod

An essential tool for all photography styles is the tripod. This keeps your camera stable and enables you to control multiple elements. These elements in your setup include lighting equipment and props for composition. 

Lighting Techniques for Product Photography

Lighting heavily affects photography as it is the backbone of it. Photography literally is drawing with light. There are lighting setups which involve one light source while others involve three. Practice and see how different lighting setups make your product look in photos. In the meantime, here are our recommended lighting setups for product photography!

1. Frontal Lighting

This is the simple and go to lighting setup for product photographers. This setup fully encompasses the front view of your product. The product’s front features are fully visible and “sells” the product in a direct manner. 

Note that this lighting setup however offers minimal background separation. So if your setup involves a background with notable elements, frontal lighting may not be your setup of choice. 

2. Overhead Lighting

Second, Overhead Lighting adds a drop shadow effect on your photo. A shadow is casted on your product adding elegance to it. Use this for products that are expensive, classy, and fancy. 

There are multiple variations to overhead lighting. The main difference with every variation is the angle of which they hit the product. Among all of these, the most used is the 45 degree tilt overhead. This creates highlights on top of the product and slowly casts a shadow to half of it.  Experiment how changing the angle of your overhead light affects the shadows and highlights on your subject. 

3. Even Lighting

Third, even lighting is used to eliminate reflections on products. This utilizes two lights placed on 45 degree angles on the left and right side of the camera. Reflections harm your product photos because they eliminate essential details on it. For example, a bottle’s inscription on its front is an important detail on the product. Using frontal lighting causes glare and reflections to appear in this area. 

By using the Even Lighting setup, you cast shadows in this section that eliminates glare. The amount of highlights produced by this technique on the product’s front is also enough to still show detail.

4. Coverage Lighting

Next, the Coverage Lighting setup aims to capture all the details of a product. Here, three lights are used. The position of two lights are directly on the left and right of the product. The last light’s position follows the frontal lighting setup. In this manner, all the details of the product receive highlights and maintain a clear appearance.

Note that coverage lighting has some variations. The previously discussed orientation works well for most products. However, there are times where reposition is necessary. 

Maintain frontal lighting with one light source and alter the placement of the other two. Continue changing the placement of the two lights until you’re satisfied with how the details pop out in your photo.

5. Form Lighting

The next variation of three point lighting setup is Form Lighting. The orientation of the three lights are as follows. One light follows the front lighting setup. The other two are placed behind both at 45 degree angles towards the subject. This creates a three dimensional look that emphasizes the subject’s form. 

The shadows in this setup give the product its form. Shadows create contrast within the product thus separating every depth within it.

6. Separation Lighting

This photography setup also follows the three point lighting concept. Much like Triangle lighting, the placement of the lights are the same. The only difference is where the back lights are facing. Instead of towards the subject, the light sources are directed towards the background. 

The main goal of this lighting setup is separation of the subject to the background. This setup creates a lighting cast that makes the subject appear at a distance from the background.

7. Natural Lighting

Lastly, you can never go wrong with natural lighting. Most photographers prefer natural lighting than indoor setups because of how the lighting falls on the subject. With natural lighting, there are still techniques you can use to enhance your photo.

The main technique you can use to enhance natural lighting is the use of reflectors. These provide soft lighting to areas on your subject which become dominated by shadows. Even out these areas by bouncing the natural light using reflectors and bouncing it towards them.

Composition Tips for Product Photography

While there are numerous composition tips for photography, not all can be applied in product photography. Most of the time, the product fills the frame. This emphasizes that the main focus of the viewer should be the product itself, its details, and features.

On the other hand, you can still apply composition in product photography with flat lay or prop use. In both of these approaches, place additional elements that relate to the product to create composition. 

Colors and contrast speak the most out of all the composition techniques you can use. This keeps the focus on the product but still makes for a stunning photo because of contrast. This is the widely used technique for product photography and is achievable by altering background or lighting colors.

3 Additional Tips for Product Photography

Congratulations on reaching this far into the article! You are now equipped with fundamentals in jumpstarting your product photography journey. Here are three additional tips for product photography that you should check out!

1. Play with Angles

First, never constrain yourself with shooting from top (flat lay) or front facing. Diversify your photos by capturing the product from different angles. This gives you a brand new perspective and gives you the chance of showcasing the product more. 

Shoot at a low angle to make the product appear tall, shoot from the top to highlight details not typically seen while front facing, and many more! The amount of possibilities in your composition is limitless. Explore and find that selling photo!

2. Gather Inspiration

Second, scroll through social media pages of different brands and gather inspiration. Think about the lighting setup used in a specific photo and mimic it to achieve similar results. See how props are placed to enhance the selling point of the item. Apply these inspirations in your next product photoshoot and you’ll improve drastically!

3. Plain White

Lastly, plain white backgrounds can never go wrong. (Unless your product color is plain white too!) This automatically brings the attention of your audience to the product itself. They have nothing else to look at except the product. 

While this is true, you must create stunning imagery by applying lighting techniques that bring out detail and form. Make your product stand out more by adding contrast to it with shadows and highlights. 

Conclusion

Product photography applies photography fundamentals in creating photos used for advertising. This is the most profitable photography niche with the constant need of photos for selling products. 

This article equips the reader with lighting and composition fundamentals extremely helpful for product photography. A section of this article also highlights the equipment you need.

Explore different tones and styles for different products and gather inspiration from big brands.

The best move in creating provoking product photos is practice. Continue capturing products and changing your lighting setup as well as composition. Check out Pensacola Photographers.

Enjoyed this article? Find more inspiration for your next photo shoot with our articles:
1. World Photography Day 2022 
2. Guide to Portrait Photography
3. Guide to Travel Photography
4. Guide to Landscape Photography

Also, look into turning your digital photos into prints with these posts:
1. The Printing Mediums of Wall Art
2. Acrylic Printing Companies
3. Wood Printing Companies
4. Canvas Printing Companies

Lastly, refresh your skills with these photography fundamentals:
1. Lighting in Photography
2. Aperture in Photography
3. Composition in Photography
4. The Art of Editing Photos

The post Guide to Product Photography appeared first on Photogpedia.

Brushing Up on Lighting

Lighting heavily affects photography as it is the backbone of it. Photography literally is drawing with light. Thus, it is of utmost importance to fully understand the concepts of lighting. Everything else related to photography follows. 

Post-processing of photos can adjust the minor mistakes with lighting from the get go. There are various editing softwares that are easy to learn available in most devices. Great understanding of the different lighting properties such as brightness and contrast among others are beneficial to post-processing. 

Lighting is a vital part of photography. A great understanding of it together with its properties benefits the improvement of your photos. Also, remember that knowledge alone isn’t enough. Application of these provides security to truly reap its benefits. 

Lighting Setups for Portrait Photography

In portrait photography, the subject’s face must be properly and creatively lit. No matter what background, a fantastic application of the lighting fundamentals would bring out the best in your portrait photography. 

Creative lighting setups help in portrait photography to bring out a great balance of shadows and highlights for the subject. This avoids a flat looking image that makes your photos look like ID pictures.

Here are creative lighting setups for photography using only one light. You’ll notice the different variations and shadows casted by these lighting setups.

1. Rembrandt Lighting

This lighting technique heavily draws inspiration from the Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. His paintings show off a gorgeous quality of light. Modern age photographers emulate this lighting in their work. A light is positioned overhead and at a 45 degree angle. This lighting technique produces a triangle shaped shadow off of the subject’s nose that connects to the shadow of the chin. 

This lighting setup produces fantastic application of contrast. The great highlight for one side of the subject’s face while casting off a rich dark shadow on the other manifests contrast. Overall, the Rembrandt lighting setup for photography provides a picturesque feel to the portrait.

2. Split Lighting

Talking about contrast, this brings the most contrast among these lighting setups. Essentially, this is the same with side lighting. The light is placed directly on the side of the subject thus producing no trace of light to the opposite half. Most of the light is concentrated on one side of the subject slowly spreading to the subject’s face. 

A clear division between the bright and dark parts of the subject can be seen. This division is equal between the nose. Similar to Rembrandt lighting, the amount of contrast in this setup is fascinating. 

3. Broad Lighting

In this lighting setup, the light source is still oriented overhead. The main difference is the point in which this hits the subject. The orientation of the light source provides luminance to the back of the subject at an angle. 

The Broad lighting setup creates a shadow for the front of the subject’s body. At the same time, the face has a dramatic mood due to the shadows casted on it. Direct your subject to tilt their head in a way where some light still touches part of their face.

4. Paramount / Butterfly Lighting

The Paramount or Butterfly lighting setup is a variation of front lighting. The light source is placed overhead directly in front of the subject. It is then angled to face downwards but still maintaining a direct impact to the subject’s face. 

A shadow forms under the nose and chin. The shadow that forms below the nose appears like a butterfly, hence the name of this lighting setup. This setup focuses on bringing forth every detail of the subject’s face and providing little contrast.

5. Loop Lighting

The setup for Loop lighting directly follows that of Rembrandt lighting but avoids creating the trademark triangle shaped shadow from the nose. At a 45 degree angle overhead the subject, this lighting technique also provides fantastic application of contrast and detail.

Portrait Photography Lighting Setup Variations

The previously discussed 5 lighting setups for portrait photography uses only one light source. Variations to these basic setups create new styles of lighting.

You can add another light source or a reflector that minimizes unwanted shadows and points of contrast in a single light setup. Also take note of the distance of your light sources with respect to your subject. This affects how exposed your subject will be. As a rule of thumb, avoid overexposure and underexposure. Practice to find the perfect setting and distance of your lights.

Lighting Setups for Product Photography

Product photography is a fun branch of photography to experiment on. As your subjects are small compared to other photography niches, playing with light setups is easy. Consider this to be your main playground in understanding lighting setups for photography. 

Find a household item, gather your lights, and follow this list of different lighting setups. Practice over time and surely, the fundamentals of lighting becomes a muscle memory. Side lighting, backlighting, and front lighting are the most basic of the setups.

For a quick rundown, here are the main orientations for each lighting setup. Side lighting uses one light source directly at the side of the subject. Front lighting uses a light source similar to the orientation of the camera. Lastly, backlighting places the light source behind the subject.

1. Overhead Lighting

Similar to the single light portrait photography setups, this uses a light source overhead the subject. This also produces dramatic results providing rich shadows on the opposite side of the light. Its main applications are for luxury products such as wrist watches and liquor.

2. Full Coverage Lighting

This lighting setup for photography utilizes 3-point lighting. Three light sources are oriented to bring out the detail of the product. This is useful for products that have intricate carvings as their main selling point.

Two lights are oriented in the side lighting manner, one on the left and the other on the right. The last light source is at the same orientation of the front camera. When using this lighting setup, take note of the distance of the side lights. 

Generally, maintain an equal distance of the two light sources between the subject. Lastly, for the front light, avoid overexposure as this removes all the wanted detail completely.

3. Triangle Lighting

This also uses three point lighting in its setup. The main goal of this product photography lighting setup is for form emphasis. 

The orientation of the three lights are as follows. One light follows the front lighting setup. The other two are placed behind both at 45 degree angles towards the subject. This creates a three dimensional look that emphasizes the subject’s form.

4. Separation Lighting

This photography setup also follows the three point lighting concept. Much like Triangle lighting, the placement of the lights are the same. The only difference is where the back lights are facing. Instead of towards the subject, the light sources are directed towards the background. 

The main goal of this lighting setup is separation of the subject to the background. This setup creates a lighting cast that makes the subject appear at a distance from the background.

Product Photography Afterword

In the previous section, combinations of multiple light orientations produced various outputs. Each has a certain purpose that benefits your product photography greatly. Aside from those listed above, play around with more light placements. 

Lighting Setups for Cinematic Photography

Cinematic lighting creates an overall dramatic mood to your photos. These are typically combinations of multiple lighting techniques. Combinations produce scenes where every detail of the setting is given a highlight. 

Emulating lighting from classical paintings gives off a cinematic mood to it. Thus, the Rembrandt Lighting setup is a cinematic lighting setup.

In this section, additional lighting setups aside the previous ones will be highlighted. Note that application and combination of the previously discussed setups also produce cinematic lighting.

1. Key Lighting

A key light is the primary light source in a setup. This is the first thing that cinematic photographers set up. This can be considered as the “spot light” for cinematic scenes.

2. Practical Lighting

This lighting setup involves the use of day to day objects that are practically light sources. These include lamps, light bulbs, candles, television sets, LED signages, and more. 

Sometimes it’s difficult to work with practical light sources. Their brightness usually is difficult to manipulate. Photographers who practice cinematic lighting often add diffusers or dimmers to adjust the brightness of lamps.

3. Soft Lighting

This is typically used to light off persons on a scene. Soft lighting produces flat brightness and highlights. This is also the most common lighting for portrait photography. Soft Lighting lessens the appearance of shadows, wrinkles, etc. Its main purpose is for beautification.

4. Hard Lighting

On the other hand, hard lighting is the total opposite of soft lighting. This emphasizes detail and texture. This is especially useful for diverting the attention of the audience to the subject. It creates high contrast because of the richness of shadows it produces.

5. Low Key Lighting

Another essential lighting setup for cinematic photography is low key lighting. If there is a requirement of loneliness, low key lighting achieves it. This uses a strong key light source to produce and emphasize shadows. 

The main focus for this lighting setup is the play with shadows. Adjustments of shadows portray sorrow, horror, or mystery.

6. Motivated Lighting

This is an alteration of practical lighting. Additional light sources emphasize the practical light emitted by light sources. A great example of this is the placement of an additional light source inside a refrigerator.

This creates a cinematic mood by highlighting the interaction of the subject with inanimate objects.

Cinematic Lighting Challenge

At first, cinematic lighting seems challenging. This is true if you lack the fundamentals of lighting setups. It’s generally advisable to hone your skills with basic lighting setups first before giving cinematic lighting a try. 

Foreword

I truly advocate the application of knowledge. It’s extremely helpful to know these concepts in mind. It’s a whole other thing once you put it into practice. You will get a feel of how the slightest of changes in your lighting setup changes the output of your photo.

There is no greater teacher than experience. Photography and lighting always come hand in hand. Personally, it’s a huge fulfilling experience to understand and practice lighting. Not only will your photos stand above the rest, but it also gives off a sense of accomplishment. 

Setting up your lights is time consuming. Achieving your desired output after putting in all the work is the most important thing. May this short article about various lighting setup be your start to applying more setups in your photography.

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