Product Photography // Six Sisters Collection

Are you ready for Spring?
Over the past week, my sister and I have been adding new, "Springy" products to our online store, Six Sisters Collection (see button below!).  I love product photography and everything involved in making the photos look great.  My sister makes the most beautiful paper-bead bracelets and I encourage you to take a look at them...  Below are photos of just a few of the bracelets she has for sale. 

How were these pictures taken?  Let me list a few key guidelines to go by:

• Natural light, diffused (I was next to a bedroom window around the golden hour)
• Textured background (This can be a wooden crate, fabric, or paper like I used, but you must remember not to clutter the product so much so, that you can't even tell what you're actually trying to sell.  I love clean backgrounds.)
• A good camera lens with a low aperture number, or f-stop (I have a 50mm fixed lens that I use for all of my product photos.  The low f-stop makes for a really nice blurry background, or bokeh, which enhances your photos to make them look more professional.  Although I typically adjust the manual settings per session, these photos were taken with an aperture number of 2.5, shutter speed of 1/100 and ISO of 800.)
• Keep the subject sharp (This is a crucial part in photography, but even more important when taking photos of products.  Put the dot on the area you want to be sharp and be sure to check the back of the camera after to see if your subject is actually sharp...this is called chimping.)
• Good editing software (You could use your photos straight out of your camera, but for a professional finish, I always edit my photos before using them.  I'm currently uploading my pictures to Nikon Transfer ViewNX 2 and Picasa and find both of these easy to use and not too complicated.  In post processing, I try to at least eliminate shadows and highlighted areas on the product, as well as, sharpen, straighten, brighten and crop each picture.)

Those are just a few of the tips I've discovered over the time I have spent working on product photography, and I'm sure there will be many new things to discover as I continue!  Stay tuned!

New product release!  Ribbon bookmarks at just $1 each!

Six Sisters Collection