E-Commerce Product Photography

As an ongoing task to photograph product items for Pwetty4U‘s e-commerce site, I’ve continued and completed the photo shoot of these used/new branded items over the course of 3 visits.

These subsequent rounds saw more and more spectacles; mostly a range of brand new high-end line of eye wear. Photographing the specs was the most eye-torturing experience due to all the squinting and monotony of the items.

Here are some samples of this concluded e-commerce product photography job featuring specs, jeans, shirts and hand bags shot on white background and acrylic.

Invisible Ghost Mannequin Photo Shoot

After completing the first day of the used branded items photo shoot for Pwetty4U, I returned to complete the following shoot for their used branded clothing using the amazingly wonderful Magic Mannequin! This invisible ghost-style shoot using a patented European design has totally revolutionised the way fashion photography is done without people.

The ghost mannequin style adds volume and depth to a particular piece of apparel to give form, shape and texture. This, coupled with precision lighting, effectively communicate the product’s physical characteristics and appeal.

I photographed numerous blazers, jackets, trench coats and jeans for Pwetty4U. Here are some of the clothing shots taken.

Used Branded Items Pack Shot Photography

The most recent pack shot photography on white background (acrylic) has proven to be a mere warm up to what was to come. Within weeks, I was engaged for something far more interesting and exciting; doing pack shot photography of used branded items for a local e-commerce website.

Pwetty4U has a large collection of pre-loved or used branded items for sale through their online web channel that needed to be photographed and well represented. These items range from small accessories (ear rings, necklaces, bracelets, cuff links, brooches), hand bags, clothing, shoes and spectacles to belts. All designer labels for both men and women’s fashion with more than half of names which I’ve never heard of.

The notable but hugely interesting difference in such assignments shooting used products as compared to shooting any new items for sale was that every product imperfection was expected to be captured. No leaving them out or editing them into oblivion by endless clone stamping. It is required that customers be presented with the complete unadulterated picture of what they are buying to avoid disputes of disparity between product representation and the real ones. So that really made my work so much easier.

The only challenge was to vary shooting style and lighting setup between material of different colours and texture, height and sizes, and finally surface reflectivity. Controlling reflection in product photography is one of the most challenging tasks ever, besides ensuring white items stay discernibly white against a white background via notable edge separation to prevent blow out. Hence, it’s never quite that straight forward as it appears to be.

As with any fashion product photography, propping items up to stand and stay in shape and in a particular orientation is always a pain when you consider post-editing to correct for this misery as truly a last resort that you’d want to avoid. The smaller it is or the softer and formless it appears, the bigger the nightmare.

Even consistent lighting was achieved via two speed lights fired through two large diffusion panel on both left and right sides of the product. All items to be photographed were placed on white acrylic surface to achieve the projected shadow effect beneath the product. A third or sometimes fourth speed light was used as bounced fill or just even a zoomed-touch of light at a particular corner, not to mention, the necessary fill cards, mirrors and the much more important black gobos to cut light. During the later stages of shooting, I also used two bare Elinchrom heads to wash out the white background.

In the end, it took me 2 full days to shoot about 100 items including clothing (to be shared in a future post), averaging about 50 a day. I think that was already quite fast. It wasn’t too bad owing to the constant change of setup moving from one product type to another.