Product Photography: Where To Get Started

If you’re looking to learn more about product photography, we’ve put together a guide of some of our most popular classes that will help you understand how to produce professional images that will stand out and win clients.

Throughout our classes, you’ll learn important skills like how to light and style various products, which lenses to choose, what equipment and accessories you'll need and how to enhance textures, shape and form. Guided by a professional photographer with over 25-years of experience, you'll also learn professional techniques for lighting product shots, including how to control the hardness and softness of light, create gradient lighting, reveal different textures and use the right modifiers to get the best results.

Getting Started With Product Photography

Before you get started, these classes will lay the groundwork as you progress and develop your skills.

Studio lighting class

Introduction & Understanding Light

To truly understand how to use studio lighting you first have to understand light. Learn about the fundamental concepts that will help you control light, no matter what you’re shooting.

Key concepts: Hard light vs soft light • Inverse Square Law • Controlling light • Reflectors & negative fill

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Photography backgrounds

Studio Backgrounds

Backgrounds are the foundation on which we build our photographs. Learn about the main types of backgrounds, which ones work best in the studio or on location, and how to make your own.

Key concepts: Background types • Common background colours • DIY backdrop

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DIY photography accessories

How To Make A Scrim

Gradient lighting is an important lighting technique in product photography. In this class you’ll learn how to make your own scrim so that you can create beautiful diffused light for any sized product.

Key concepts: DIY scrim • Step-by-step instruction • Equipment & materials

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Speedlite Product Photography Classes

If you just have one or two speedlites, these classes are a great way to start product photography and learn how produce amazing results with minimal equipment.

Splash photography using speedlites

Speedlite Splash Shot

The perfect introduction to splash photography, learn how to photograph a creative splash shot using one speedlite and some diffusion material. This class covers the setup, camera settings and lighting to capture fast splash shots.

Key concepts: Freezing motion • Fast flash duration • Diffused lighting

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Photography bubbles

Shooting Liquid Bubbles

Discover how to shoot advertising-style images like this using a simple speedlite setup. You’ll also learn how to get different bubble shapes, colour effects and get the focus right each time.

Key concepts: Photographing bubbles • Creating coloured backgrounds • Freezing motion

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Creative sports photography

Sports Product Shoot With Paint Splash

Follow this step-by-step class on how to capture high-speed paint splash images using speedlites. This class covers the thought-process behind the shot and how to use multiple speedlites to get the right lighting.

Key concepts: Freezing motion • Fast flash duration • Product photography ideas

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One Light Product Photography Classes

A lack of studio lights doesn't have to be an excuse. If you have even just one light you can produce great results with the right knowledge, as you'll see in these classes.

Food photography lighting setup

Ginger & Lime Tea Shoot

This class teaches you how to shoot clear, reflective objects using one light. You’ll also learn how to compose your shot, style the shot and introduce additional light by using reflective card.

Key concepts: Product styling & lighting • Using reflectors • Shooting clear objects

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One light product photography setup

One Light Lipstick Product Shoot

Discover the planning, testing, lighting and shooting that goes into creating an eye-catching product such as this. Gradient lighting, which is a commonly used technique in product photography, is also covered in this class.

Key concepts: Gradient lighting • Tilt-shift photography • Composition & framing

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Watch product photography class

Luxury Watch Photography

You can create high-end advertising images like this using just one light. You’ll also learn how to shoot small objects (a common challenge in product photography), create gradient lighting for shiny surfaces and use reflectors for additional light.

Key concepts: Gradient lighting • Using reflectors • Focus stacking

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Professional Product Photography Classes

Once you've mastered the basics of product photography, you'll be able to pick and choose which of our classes you'd like to watch next.

Clear bottle product photography

Photographing Clear Liquid Bottles

Learn how to shoot clear bottles as Karl shares professional tips for lighting and photographing bottles. This class covers how to use gradient lighting to avoid harsh reflections, what backgrounds to use and how to create artificial condensation.

Key concepts: Gradient lighting • Using reflectors • Controlling reflections

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Jewellery photography class

Jewellery Photography

Learn how to overcome challenges like lighting metallic surfaces, minimising unwanted reflections, achieving sufficient depth of field and styling the product as Karl demonstrates how to shoot a gemstone necklace.

Key concepts: Controlling light • Background choice • Minimising reflections

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Headphones product shoot

High-end Headphones Product Shoot

Clean product shots like this can be deceptively complex, but not if you know how to create white backgrounds, light different textures and control your light, as Karl demonstrates in this headphone product shoot.

Key concepts: Creating white backgrounds • Polarising light • Controlling shadows

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This small selection of classes will help you get started shooting products by covering some of the fundamental knowledge and skills you need to advance. If you’re looking for more product photography ideas, take a look at our other product photography classes.

Comments

  1. hello Can someone tell me how to photograph a wash basin on a white background. I have a lot of different reflections. The photos are ugly. How do I remove reflections?

  2. Thank you for all these wonderful tutorials, May I ask a post production question please.
    I do a lot of jewellery and I use the focus stack method to get good depth of field.
    My problem came when the client asked me to put a ring onto a models hand in a stock photo.
    I find that I loose detail when I reduce my ring to fit on the models hand.
    What am I doing wrong when I reduce the ring…is it my method of reducing or is it because it is so much of a reduction.
    I hope you can help me
    Kind Regards
    Hanli

    1. Author

      Hi Hanli. I’m not sure what method you’re using to downsize the image, but potentially the software you’re using is doing a bad job or the image is being downsized too much and there just isn’t enough information left for it to retain detail.

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