I have gotten my Wine Making Kit online, as well as the required Wine Making Kit Refill
If you have any sort of web store, or are selling any items on the internet, or anywhere, for that matter, you will need to take enticing product photos. I will try to provide a short description of a technique for taking simple, effective product photos.
1. You will need a place to take the photos.
I fashioned a simple "photo studio" which serves my purpose. You may, if you wish, purchase a "home product studio" from several retailers. These are more professional, and have everything you need, but you will pay for it.
This is effective, and will serve your purpose if you have the cash. You can find this studio at first street, among other places. If you have $60 to spare on your business, go ahead. I do not, however. If you will be taking TONS of photos, this is worth it, I, however, do not have enough turnover to make it worth my while.I fashioned my own studio which works very effectively. I simply used 4 different pieces of computer paper to fashion my own little studio. I just took a little time, and some tape, and formed exactly what I needed, add a light to the picture (it's a pun, get it?) and voila!
- I folded the side pieces, so, when laid on top of the other piece of paper, they would reach the end.
- Tape them to the back piece of paper.
- Tape the bottom piece of paper to the walls.
- You are finished making it.
I turned off the lights in the room, shined my light straight up, reflected the light back down on the product, and got a result as follows:
A little quick photo editing yielded me:
This was as simple as pie. Well, it sounds simple as pie, but how exactly did I do it?
2. Get a decent camera
I used the Panasonic Lumix FZ28, which I just got, and think is an INCREDIBLE camera. You do NOT need a super complicated camera. Certainly, the nicer the camera, the nicer the photos, but you will not get bad photos from a less than stellar camera. Ideally, you will want some manual settings. I set my shutter to 8 seconds, at and ISO of 100, and got great results.
You do not need to be perfect, but here are the settings I used:
Shutter priority
ISO 100
Shutter time of 8 seconds (Also tried with 6, and 4 seconds with good results)
NO FLASH
You will likely need a tripod, or some sort of stable place to put your camera. With these long shutter times, it is very easy to get a blurry image. You can get a cheap tripod on e-Bay. While not necessary, make sure you at least have a way to keep the camera very steady.
If you can set these settings, try them out. The important thing is to try to work out what settings are needed for your own camera. These worked for me, but may be terrible for your settings, only time will tell.
3. Edit the photo
At the very least, you can put your photo up without any editing, but you will benefit from some editing. If you have adobe Photoshop, and you know how to use it well, you are pretty much done with anything I could tell you.
You will want to do some cropping, which can be done in very simple programs, even windows picture editor can crop. If you want to do a little more work, try GIMP. It is a toned down photo editor like Photoshop, which is completely free. I have used GIMP do do some very nice effects, and though I don't like it as much as Photoshop, it works well. I used a clone stamp tool to fill in some areas which were not what I wanted them to look like. For example:
This was the original photo, taken with only the little photo studio I fashioned.
You can see the difference that can be made upon a photo with just some simple editing tricks.
4. Publish the Photo
You'll want to make sure you save the photo in the proper settings for your personal sales website. My main requirement is that I save in a square. Beyond that, it can be in any size, and it will be fixed by ecrater.
I hope that helps out, it's a simple process, and it can be repeated for any products. Picture here were my Wine Making kit, and Wine Making Refill Kit.
If you have read this post on facebook, the complete blog is available at www.dormroombiz.com
A little quick photo editing yielded me:
This was as simple as pie. Well, it sounds simple as pie, but how exactly did I do it?2. Get a decent camera
I used the Panasonic Lumix FZ28, which I just got, and think is an INCREDIBLE camera. You do NOT need a super complicated camera. Certainly, the nicer the camera, the nicer the photos, but you will not get bad photos from a less than stellar camera. Ideally, you will want some manual settings. I set my shutter to 8 seconds, at and ISO of 100, and got great results.
You do not need to be perfect, but here are the settings I used:
Shutter priority
ISO 100
Shutter time of 8 seconds (Also tried with 6, and 4 seconds with good results)
NO FLASH
You will likely need a tripod, or some sort of stable place to put your camera. With these long shutter times, it is very easy to get a blurry image. You can get a cheap tripod on e-Bay. While not necessary, make sure you at least have a way to keep the camera very steady.
If you can set these settings, try them out. The important thing is to try to work out what settings are needed for your own camera. These worked for me, but may be terrible for your settings, only time will tell.
3. Edit the photo
At the very least, you can put your photo up without any editing, but you will benefit from some editing. If you have adobe Photoshop, and you know how to use it well, you are pretty much done with anything I could tell you.
You will want to do some cropping, which can be done in very simple programs, even windows picture editor can crop. If you want to do a little more work, try GIMP. It is a toned down photo editor like Photoshop, which is completely free. I have used GIMP do do some very nice effects, and though I don't like it as much as Photoshop, it works well. I used a clone stamp tool to fill in some areas which were not what I wanted them to look like. For example:
This was the original photo, taken with only the little photo studio I fashioned.
You can see the difference that can be made upon a photo with just some simple editing tricks.
4. Publish the Photo
You'll want to make sure you save the photo in the proper settings for your personal sales website. My main requirement is that I save in a square. Beyond that, it can be in any size, and it will be fixed by ecrater.
I hope that helps out, it's a simple process, and it can be repeated for any products. Picture here were my Wine Making kit, and Wine Making Refill Kit.
- Make a simple studio
- Get a simple camera
- Take some photos
- Do some editing
- Sell some products
If you have read this post on facebook, the complete blog is available at www.dormroombiz.com
