A practical checklist for product photography

There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. Run through this the next time product photography comes up.

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

The checklist

• Consistent lighting and background make a catalogue look professional
• Scale shots prevent returns from size surprises
• One excellent photo beats six mediocre angles
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

What is actually at stake

Consistent lighting and background make a catalogue look professional. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

How to tell if yours is fine

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Three things worth confirming about product photography before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Scale shots prevent returns from size surprises — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.