In recent years, the field of photography has undergone a drastic transformation. The advent of digital cameras and photo-editing software has increased photographic content’s visual quality and quantity. This expansion has led to new opportunities for photographers, including ecommerce fashion photography for marketplace and stores.
In this article, we will explore the basics of fashion photography for ecommerce, and camera settings and also, provide tips on capturing fashion images that will help you sell clothes online.
Let’s dive in.
Acquire knowledge About Fashion eCommerce Photography Requirements for Uploads to Popular Marketplaces:
Fashion photography is a challenging and time-consuming task that requires a lot of expertise and skill. To be able to upload images to popular e-commerce marketplaces, you need to have high-resolution images with good lighting. But at the same time, you have to keep in mind that there are various platforms and e-commerce marketplaces with different requirements for fashion photos. So, know what type of photos your eCommerce site accepts and capture images according to their requirements.
How You Can Take Fashion Photographs For Ecommerce
Prepare the Clothes: Begin by getting your clothes ready. For fashion photography, the clothes must be completely fresh in condition with no stains, no wrinkles, or anything that could create a distraction. Check the clothing from top to bottom and go for the final selection if you find everything is of top quality.
But if you find any issues with the product and think about correcting them with Photoshop, that would not be a good decision because it will increase your editing work. Also, these types of issues are unsolvable without professional help. However, the best thing to do is make the garment smoother with lint rollers or tape.
Understands Each Product’s Best-Selling Points: Get a clear idea of each product’s finest selling points since you’ll need to highlight your items’ best components and signature parts. You can discuss it with the merchandiser to get a better understanding. It would be best to have a clear picture of the target audience, including their lifestyle, tastes, and other factors. This will enable you to pitch to the customer several product elements. This detailed knowledge will help the entire team enhance the final photographs, ready to serve a purpose.
Make a Blueprint of Your Process: Now that you have your products and have gathered knowledge about the audience, it’s time to make yourself and the team prepare for the final shoot. Before starting, make a blueprint of how you will run the entire process till the end.
Firstly, decide how the models will pose, and if you are using a ghost mannequin, finalize the focusing points.
Decide on your studio setup. Lighting and all other setups that are usually needed. And also, be specific about your framing ideas. A photography study guide can be helpful as it already has pictures and examples of posing, framing, angles, styles, and lighting.
Use a Ghost Mannequin or Live Model: If you have hired a live model for your business, then it’s your choice if you want to use a ghost mannequin at the same time or not. But hiring models is costly for eCommerce businesses, so photography with ghost mannequins is an excellent choice for budgets.
Mannequin allows buyers to visualize each product’s structure and natural drapery, giving them a realistic idea of how the outfit will fit them. Ghost mannequin photography solutions use artificial intelligence to enable dynamic viewing of your products in a few simple steps.
Now It’s Time For The Shoot
Finally, you are going to take pictures of your product. As the market nowadays is too competitive, keep in mind that you can stand out from the competition with high quality and unique fashion photographs.
Let’s see what things you will need for a successful photoshoot:
- Camera
- Background
- Lighting
Camera: You’ll need a good quality camera. We’re not saying you have to buy one with a high budget; you can start with what you have. Just make sure your camera produces good-quality pictures.
You can also hire professional photographers for the best results. A previously knowledgeable photographer about fashion photography will ensure that you get the best quality images.
Background: A plain white background is essential. There’s not much work left if you have a studio set up with a white background. Make the background neat and clean and get ready for shooting. But if you don’t have a ready-made white background, you can simply get one. A white backdrop or plain board can nicely serve your purpose. Set the backdrop as your picture background.
Light: For eCommerce fashion photography, natural light is not enough. You have to arrange enough extra lighting. Besides, you cannot control natural light, and shooting is impossible at night or in the evening, depending on the sunlight. So, arrange proper artificial lighting to give you control over the process. However, the lights have to be perfectly white so that they have no impact on the product’s colors.
Capture Details From Varying Angles
Capture enough pictures to show the customers every part of the product. Click images for every focal point of the dresses. A complete picture, sideline, neckline, buttons, embroidery, sleeves, zippers, and also if there is any other unique feature. Take a minimum of seven to ten photos of each piece of apparel.
Photo Retouching and Editing
No matter how well taken a photograph is or how beautiful the model is, commercial photos require a retouch before posting. This part of the work is called post-processing. It includes making any changes to the images after taking them.
Primary level retouching includes:
- Colour and tone correction.
- Brightness, contrast, and saturation change.
- Minor blemishes are removed.
- Vignetting and toning
Premium Retouching includes:
- removal of unwanted objects.
- Teeth whitening, hair retouching.
- Sharpening
Your fashion photos will be perfected with retouching, and you’ll be able to achieve a consistent style across the board.
Camera Settings for eCommerce Fashion Photography:
Setting ISO:
ISO is the measure of how sensitive a camera is to light. The higher the ISO number, the more susceptible it is. This setting is used to control how much light reaches the sensor. ISO settings are usually set in increments of 1/3 stop up to 6400 and then in increments of 1/2 stop up to 12800. It refers to the sensitivity of your camera sensor to light.
Cameras come with the lowest ISO setting, and it’s best to keep it low. Higher ISO settings can lower the picture quality and create noise. You can change the ISO mode on your camera to Auto, Manual, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, or Program instead of choosing a manual ISO.
Aperture Setting:
The opening of a lens through which light flows to enter the camera is known as the aperture. Aperture puts a variety of effects on your photos. Your photographs’ brightness, or exposure, is perhaps the most evident. The quantity of light that reaches your camera sensor—and hence the brightness of your image—changes as the aperture changes in size.
A high aperture allows more light to pass through, resulting in a brighter image, and a low aperture has the opposite effect, darkening a photograph. The aperture on your camera will generally be f/2, f/3.5, f/8, and so on. Some cameras remove the slash and instead write the f-stops as f2, f3.5, f8, etc. For fashion photography, set a value above f/11.
Setting a Proper White Balance:
The next step is to set the correct white balance. In fashion photography, the light sources employed largely determine the white balance. Make sure the product returns to its natural color with the white balance setup. In your camera’s settings, you’ll see a default option. You may make it the default and see if the clothes’ color matches the actual thing. A white balance distortion may harm the exact color of the clothing in the images.
The Use of Color is Crucial:
In fashion photography, color is the most crucial component. The influence of displaying a product with a different color on your brand identification and consumer experience is significant. Adobe RGB, CMYK, and SRGB are some of the color spaces to consider. Although any of these alternatives can be used, SRGB is the most common for fashion photography.
Although SRGB keeps images uniform and brilliant across screens, browsers, and websites, we cannot guarantee that your photos will be color accurate. So the ideal approach is to take the shot with the best camera mood possible and then edit it to bring out the accurate colors.
EndNote
The increasing demand for high-quality ecommerce fashion photography has given rise to a plethora of fashion photographers. However, not all of them are created equal. A bad photo can sink a product, and a good one can help it sell. So, what goes into making a great fashion photograph? In this blog post, we’ve tried to bring you the answer to this question by taking you through the complete process, from preparing and shooting to post-processing and camera setting.
