Knowing how to photograph beauty products is critical for any fashion or beauty business. A well-taken photograph of a business's products goes a long way in attracting new customers. 

Hence, if you run a fashion business, you must ensure your products' pictures are of the highest quality. No matter how good your products are in real life, you may lose customers if your products' picture quality is low. After all, the first contact customers will have with your beauty products will come through pictures on your online store.

For eCommerce owners looking for tips on how to photograph your beauty products, this is where we come in. Thanks to years of experience taking product images in Ontario, we have a ton of helpful hacks to help you capture the best product images. In written form, here’s what you need to know.

Why Good Pictures Are Important For Your Beauty Business

Having beautiful, high-quality photographs for your products goes a long way to boost your brand. You see, customers may judge your product's value and brand's trustworthiness by the quality of your visual representation. 

Despite the importance of good product photography, not all brands can afford it. This is especially true for new and upcoming brands still finding their feet in the business. 

However, the inability to afford a professional photography studio for your products doesn't mean you should take bad product pictures. You can take advantage of this guide to taking images of beauty products to become better at product photography. 

The importance of high-quality photos for a business is beyond aesthetics. A beautiful product photograph can be the difference between converting new customers and making no sales. 

This is especially true if you sell your products via online stores or market sites like Amazon. On the internet, picture quality plays a huge role in determining a customer's choice. With many competing brands showing off their products, a customer may get attracted to online stores with better picture quality. 

For a small to mid-sized business, you may not necessarily have to worry about photography studio costs. Instead, you can take advantage of the many product photography tools and do the job yourself. You are not a professional, so you will need guidance on how to go about this. That is what this article will show you as you go on. 

In the section that follows, we will describe how to take images of beauty products for eCommerce. Regardless of your budget, the tips we will discuss here will help you give your business leverage above your competitors. 

Tips For Taking Beauty Product Images

Here’s what you need to take better pictures of your beauty products: 

You can use your smartphone's camera

If the cost of a high-end camera with the most superior features is too high for you, you can use your smartphone to take good product pictures. Newer smartphones have great cameras with high megapixels, a feature that allows them to capture excellent images. 

These smartphones also come with multiple settings that can help you optimize your pictures despite the lighting you choose. Therefore, you don't have to be scared about using your smartphones to capture your products' photos. 

Make use of a tripod

While taking pictures with your phone, you may want to balance it against something to aim your lens toward the product. Ensure that what you are balancing your phone against is sturdy. If it isn’t, your phone or camera may shake while shooting. When this happens, there may be inconsistencies in the pictures you take. 

Whatever you choose to balance your phone against should be firm and not likely to change its position during shooting. You can decide to hold your phone yourself while shooting. However, with more products to capture, inconsistencies may arise. How then can you attain consistency?

The best way to do this is to use a tripod. Nowadays, it doesn't cost so much to buy one. You can use two types of tripods when taking pictures of beauty products with your smartphone. There are traditional as well as flexible tripods. The latter has an adjustable mount with bendable legs, useful for attaining desired angles. 

With a tripod stand, you can fasten your smartphone or camera using its mobile grip. The mobile grip allows you to operate the camera's controls. Then, face the camera toward the product you want to capture after setting the tripod mount properly. 

Use the right light setting for each product

This is one of the critical makeup product photography tips. You must understand that one single light setting may not work for different beauty products. The two types of light sources you can use are natural light and artificial light. While one light source may cast a product in great light, it may not do the same for another product. 

Hence, you must know which light sources will favour your products. Sunlight is a natural light source and is also called soft light. The range of light it casts on a product is larger and softer than artificial light. Here’s a beauty product photography tip that will help here. Use natural light if:

• The product is better off being shot outdoors.
• If a person wears the product.
• The focus is on the surroundings rather than the product's specific attributes.

Artificial light or hard light refers to light bulbs, candles, fire, lamps, etc. They produce a smaller light surface, which focuses more on the product. These light sources are best for products with details you want to highlight in a bid to catch your customers' attention. 

Adding soft light to an artificially lit picture will soften its sharpness. On the other hand, adding hard light to a naturally lit photo will sharpen the image. 

Use bounce or fill lights in softening shadows

This is an important guide for beauty product photography. Whether you use artificial light or natural light, you must take steps to reduce shadows that a hard light may cast on the product's opposite end. You can do this by using a fill light or flashbulb bounce card to soften the shadows. 

Fill light is an additional but less-intense light you use to supplement the main light you are using. It helps to soften or counterbalance the natural shadow your primary light source casts behind your product. To do this, you need to place the fill light opposite the primary light source. The product is placed between the main light and fill light sources. 

The bounce card is also called a reflector card. It is a small card useful for reflecting or bouncing the main light back onto the surface. In doing so, it reduces the shadows cast on your beauty products by the main product. There are two main types of bounce cards: the flashbulb bounce card and the standalone bounce card. 

Use backgrounds that emphasize your product

Makeup or beauty products can be small. Hence, one way to photograph beauty products is to use backgrounds to highlight their details. You want your customer to see what you are selling, so you have to show them your product's uniqueness. 

To do this, you can use backgrounds. Here, you can apply the sweep or white background and the real world background or portrait mode. Experiment and play around with different backdrops before settling on the best one. In taking photographs of beauty products, you must choose the perfect backdrop for each product. 

Take many pictures

When taking photographs of your products, don't stop at one. Your customers are shopping online, and you want them to get as much feel of the product as they can. Hence, you should have various photos for a particular product to enhance their online shopping experience. 

Think about your customer

This may be the most important tip on how to photograph beauty products. You do what you do because of your customer. Hence, when photographing your beauty products, the eventual customer should be on your mind. 

What does your target market want? What do they like and want to see? Answers to these questions will help you to take better pictures focused on reaching your customers' satisfaction. Hence, you must carry out proper research before beginning the product photography journey. 

Conclusion

With the tips in this guide, you should have a detailed roadmap of how to photograph beauty products. It is not exceedingly compulsory for you to apply these tips all at once. You also don't need to buy all the equipment all at once. 

Instead, you can start gradually, learning each step of the process. Also, observe what works best for your products and your store before settling on a specific style. With experience, you will become better and versatile enough to tweak your approach. 

Or you can skip all of this and move straight to expert level product images of your beauty products. Here at Style Photos, we offer beautiful product photography services. Or you can rent our advanced product photography equipment. Contact us today to discuss options with an expert!