After years of shooting products professionally — for Amazon sellers, e-commerce brands, local South Florida businesses, and national campaigns — I’ve distilled what I know into the techniques that make the biggest difference. These aren’t the generic tips you’ve read in a dozen other blog posts. These are the specific things I do in my studio that consistently produce images that convert.
Get Your Lighting Right Before Anything Else
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: lighting is 80% of product photography. Before you think about backgrounds, props, or camera settings, get the lighting right. The two fundamentals: use a large, soft light source (a window with a diffusion curtain, a large softbox, or a bounce umbrella), and light from the side rather than from the front.
Side lighting creates dimension — highlights on one side, shadows on the other. This is what makes a product look three-dimensional in a two-dimensional photo. Front lighting (including on-camera flash) flattens everything and eliminates the depth cues that make products look tangible and real. I covered lighting in extensive detail in my food photography lighting guide, and the same principles apply to all products.
Use a Tripod. Always.
A tripod isn’t optional for product photography — it’s as essential as the camera itself. It eliminates camera shake for sharper images, allows you to shoot at lower ISO settings for less noise, lets you use smaller apertures (f/8-f/11) for more of the product in focus, maintains consistent framing between shots (critical for catalogs), and frees your hands for adjusting the product and props between shots.
I use a tripod for every single product shoot. The only exception is lifestyle product photography where I’m moving around a scene — and even then, I sometimes mount the camera to stabilize certain angles.
Control Your Background
The background should serve the product, never compete with it. For e-commerce and marketplace shots, white is the standard (and required on Amazon — I wrote about this in my Amazon product photography guide). For social media and brand content, choose backgrounds that complement your product’s color palette and reinforce your brand positioning.
My go-to background collection includes white seamless paper, marble tiles, wood surfaces in three tones, gray concrete, and solid colored paper in about 20 colors. I also use fabric backgrounds for softer looks. Full details in my background ideas post.
Style With Intention
Every element in the frame should be there for a reason. A prop that doesn’t support the product story is a distraction. Before adding anything to the scene, ask: does this help the viewer understand or want the product? If the answer is no, remove it.
The best product styling feels effortless but is actually meticulously planned. That “casually placed” coffee cup next to the planner? I moved it 15 times to find the right position. The “natural” spill of ingredients next to the supplement bottle? Each ingredient was placed individually with tweezers. The craft is in making it look unplanned.
Shoot More Angles Than You Think You Need
For every product, I shoot a minimum of these angles: straight-on front view, 3/4 angle (the most flattering for most products), top-down/overhead, back view showing label or details, close-up detail shots, and scale shots showing the product in context. For e-commerce, you need all of these. Even if you think you only need one shot, shoot all the angles — you’ll inevitably need them for social media, marketplace listings, or marketing materials later.
Get the White Balance Right
Color accuracy in product photography isn’t optional. If a customer orders a navy blue product and it arrives looking royal blue, you’ll get a return and a bad review. I shoot with a gray card in my test shots and set a custom white balance so every color in the frame is accurate. If you’re shooting on a phone, tap and hold to lock the exposure, then adjust the color temperature slider until whites look truly white.
Don’t Over-Edit
The temptation with product photos is to crank up the saturation, over-sharpen, and smooth every surface until the product looks hyperreal. Resist this. Over-saturated colors look fake and create unrealistic expectations. Heavy sharpening creates halos around product edges. Aggressive skin smoothing on things like leather or fabric removes the texture that makes products look real and touchable.
My editing philosophy for product photography: correct the exposure and white balance, adjust contrast for punch, clean up any dust or imperfections that aren’t part of the product, and sharpen appropriately for the output medium. The goal is the product looking its best while still looking like itself.
Consistency Is King for Catalogs
If you’re shooting a catalog of products — whether it’s 10 items or 500 — consistency matters more than any individual creative decision. Same lighting, same background, same angle, same editing treatment across all products. Your product page should look like it was all shot in the same session (even if it wasn’t). This is where professional photography really separates from DIY — maintaining perfect consistency across hundreds of products requires systematic studio practices.
Invest in Getting It Right
If you’re at the stage where product photography is critical to your business — selling on Amazon, running a Shopify store, pitching to retailers — the investment in professional photography pays for itself quickly through higher conversion rates, fewer returns, and stronger brand perception.
Check out my product photography pricing, or learn about specific services for Amazon, food and restaurant, and e-commerce photography. Based in Delray Beach, serving all of South Florida.