Preparing Your Product Photography Budget for 2024?
Check and compare the different factors that will affect the price of product photography and prepare your budget accordingly. Product photography prices with 360Refinery start at $9/ photo.
There are a number of different ways to create lifestyle photos, and each method has its PROs and CONs, let's explore them below:
1. Who Needs Product Photography?
2. Types of Product Photo Services
3. PROs and CONs of Taking Product Photos by Yourself
4. PROs and CONs of Hiring a Local Freelance Photographer
5. PROs and CONs of Hiring a Professional Photography Company
WHO NEEDS PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY
Anyone who has an ecommerce shop like a shopify website or amazon store needs product photos. It is very important to present your products in a way that not only makes them look good to the buyers, but also show what the product does and what are its unique features.
These days with affordable technology and a myriad of tutorials online many sellers choose to take product photos by themselves. There are also hundreds of thousands of product photographers near you and in nearby cities to choose from. All of this makes it very difficult to decide how much you should be spending on product photography and who should take the photos for best results.
It is important to keep in mind that product photography is absolutely indispensable for ecommerce, it is what makes the first impression on the customers, what improves the overall shopping experience, and what helps viewers visualize what your products are all about. Descriptions are great, but very few buyers go and read through paragraph to understand all features and benefits of a product. Quality product photos build trust. You will never see any large brands use images that have anything but outstanding lighting and post-production in their listings online and even for social media posts the images are at least very well selected.
Let's explore more about the different types of product photos and ways to produce them.
TYPES OF PRODUCT PHOTO SERVICES
If you hire a product photographer near you or a product photography company, they will have a variety of product photo services on offer. These usually include:
- packshot photography (standard images of your product on a plain white background),
- still life images (these are images of your product in studio on solid color paper with added props and maybe a hand model to create the impression that the product is in use in an environment),
- product lifestyle photography (these are photos of your product on an actual set that is a real size kitchen, living room, bathroom etc),
- hand models (many photographers offer hand models for hire to interact with your product for the photo),
- on-model photography (for clothing catalogs this type of images are very important to showcase the fit of the garments),
- post-production services (most product photographers will either be able to retouch or work with professional retouchers who will be able to enhance the images take to make the product look nicer)
PROs and CONs of TAKING PRODUCT PHOTOS BY YOURSELF
If you are looking for the best way to get cheap product photography, taking product photos by yourself will give you the cheapest product photos possible. You can take product photos even with generic equipment and a few lighting reflectors. Just watch some product photography tutorials online and you will be good to go in a few hours.
PROs: You will get the cheapest product photos by paying nothing for them.
CONs: The product photos will likely not be of the best quality, unless you are willing to invest thousands of ours of your time to learn all the nuances of high quality product photography production. Especially when it comes to creating product lifestyle photography, it will be quite challenging and time-consuming to produce great product photos.
PROs and CONs OF HIRING A LOCAL FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Hiring a freelance photographer near you is another way to get the quality product photos that you need for our listings.
PROs: A freelance product photographer will be very flexible in how he or she works with you. From arranging meetings to attending the photo shoot, it is very likely that a freelance photographer will be willing to work on your terms.
CONs: Freelance product photographers are probably going to charge quite a high fee, especially if they are good at what they do. Production times will vary depending on the volume of work they have at the time of your project. For lifestyle product photos a freelancer is probably going to have to rent a location, because a single photographer is very unlikely to have access to various sets on a rolling basis.
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PROs and CONs OF HIRING A PROFESSIONAL PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY COMPANY
A photography company has multiple photographers, studios, account managers and other team members to ensure every project goes smoothly. This means that large volumes of work can be handled by one company. For example 360Refinery has product photographers in China and also in Europe, if you were to do photo shoots on several locations, you would have to work with more than one freelance photographer, which increases the time to find a photographer and also to manage the projects.
PROs: A product photography company will be able to offer consistent production times and quality, product photographers that specialize in different product types, and be able to handle a large volume of work.
CONs: Compared to freelance photographers, a photography company will not be so flexible and will have own set of rules and procedures that clients have to follow.
