Ecommerce photography is usually the only chance a customer has to judge fit, fabric, colour and quality before they buy. It carries more weight than most brands give it credit for, and the gap between adequate and good is mostly made up of unglamorous decisions taken before the shoot.
1. Write the lighting setup down
Consistency across a catalogue starts with a setup you can rebuild exactly. If each drop is lit slightly differently, colours drift between collections and the category page starts to look like several brands.
Document it properly: which heads, at what power, on which modifiers, at what distance and height, with what on the floor. In our own studio the workhorse build is Profoto D1 500 heads through a seven foot Octabox with two smaller softboxes for fill, and a beauty dish when a piece needs harder definition. Written down like that, a shoot in March genuinely matches a shoot in October.
Photograph the setup itself at the end of the first day. A picture of the room with the stands where they were is faster to work from than any written note.
2. Decide treatment per product before the day
Flat lay, ghost mannequin, on model and still life are answers to different questions, and choosing on the day costs setups.
| If the customer is asking | Shoot |
|---|---|
| What does the fabric look like closely | Detail and texture frames |
| What shape is this garment | Ghost mannequin |
| How will it look on me | On model |
| What exactly am I getting | Flat lay, on white |
| How big is it | Something with scale in frame |
Mark it on the shot list, group by setup, and the day plans itself.
3. Shoot scale, every time
Scale is the single most commonly missing frame and one of the most common causes of returns. A bag photographed alone on white could be any size. The same bag on a model's shoulder, or beside something universally understood, answers the question instantly.
- Garments: at least one on model or ghost mannequin frame per style
- Accessories: in hand, on the body, or against a known object
- Homeware and skincare: in a real setting rather than floating on white
4. Judge colour against the sample, not the screen
Colour accuracy is where photography quietly costs money. A jumper that photographs one shade warmer than it is generates returns that look like a product problem and are actually a lighting problem.
- Keep the physical sample on set and compare it to the screen under consistent light
- Shoot a colour reference frame at the start of each setup
- Work in sRGB end to end, because that is what browsers assume
- Sign off colour on a calibrated screen, not on a laptop in a bright room
5. Shoot wider than the final crop
Every platform wants a different shape, and cropping in is free while cropping out does not exist. A square master with the product at about 85 percent of the frame gives you the grid image, the vertical for the product page and social, and a detail crop, all without going back to the studio.
The full specification for that master, and where the platform requirements actually differ, is in our ecommerce image specs guide.
The compounding effect
None of these is dramatic on its own. Together they are the difference between a catalogue that looks assembled and one that looks designed, and between imagery you reshoot every season and imagery that still matches in two years.
Sources
The Motherlight team
Written from the studio floor at Holborn Studios in Shoreditch, where we shoot ecommerce, campaign and product work for fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands.