Product photography in the digital age
The internet has spawned a whole new style when it comes to product photography. We’ve all seen the internet stores that have floating items with white backgrounds. Now, if you are not a photographer, you might think that you can achieve this look without the help of Photoshop, but you are wrong. Most of the product photos you see online that have a white background have been erased in Photoshop, giving the illusion that they were actually photographed that way. The biggest problem with this type of photography is that it uses all the soft light and gives the image a very low contrast and flat look. So that? So you can easily remove it to white in Photoshop? Only if you want to sacrifice image quality!
There are hundreds of websites selling cheap products telling people that they can get professional looking photos on a very low budget. So people are trying to imitate all this white background for their internet store. Whether it’s for an internet retail store, selling on eBay and other auction websites. The most important product being promoted is light boxes/tents. These started showing up on eBay quite a while ago. Mainly because all the “Selling on eBay” books were telling people that a good photo would increase your sales. And well, the photography industry decided to capitalize on this cheap, “anyone can do it” mentality.
The bad news is that this cheap, “anyone can do it” style gear has branched into the mainstream and big name companies are selling these light boxes or tents as a professional setup. Please know that this is not a professional setup for product photography. It might work if you’re selling on eBay, but the quality of lighting coming from these tents is below average. They usually don’t even come with an actual strobe, just a hot light that you put on the right and left side of the shop.
If you want something professional, throw away that $100 tent you bought on eBay, and more importantly, throw away those annoying hot lights.
If you are a small business owner, the way you stand out from the competition is by being different. So instead of taking bad photos that have a boring white background, how about adding some colored backgrounds or some texture to grab the viewer’s attention?