Product Photography on the Web with white backgrounds

The web has made a whole new style when it comes to product photography. You have all seen the website shops that have floating products with white backgrounds. Now if you aren’t knowledgeable about photography, you might think that you can accomplish this look without the help with Photoshop, but you are incorrect. Most of the product shots that you see on the web that have white background have been knocked out in Photoshop, giving the impression that they were indeed photographed that way. The issue with this type of photography is that it uses all soft light and gives the scene a very low contrast, flat look. Why? So you can in a fast manner knock it out to white in Photoshop? Only if you want to pass over the quality of the shot!

There are so many sites selling crappy lighting setups out there that are misinforming people you can get professional looking photographs on a very low budget. So photographers are trying to mimic this all white background for their internet site. Whether it is for a internet ecommerce site, selling on eBay and other auction websites. The main light setup that is being pushed are the light box/tents. These began to be marketed on eBay quite a while ago. Mostly because all the “Sell on eBay” literature were telling people that a good photo would raise their sales. And well the photography industry decided to capitalize on this cheap and “anyone can do it” thought processes.

This method could work if you are selling on eBay, but the quality of lighting coming from these tent boxes is sub-par. They usually don’t even use actual strobe, just a tungsten light that you put on the right and left side of the tent.

If you want something that stands out, trash that $100 tent box you bought on eBay and more importantly throw out those pesky hot lights.

If you run a small business, how you set apart from the competition is by being better. So instead of cranking out bad photos that have a boring white background, how about making some color backgrounds or some texture to grab the viewer’s attention.

Craig Smith is a
product photographer in Dallas
specializing in jewelry, gems and minerals. You can visit other interesting
photography articles
on his blog.

Guide on how to do product photography on the cheap