Photography Blog

Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.

Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.

This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.

Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:

Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.

Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don’t confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry.

Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer’s attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.

Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer’s attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer’s LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.

Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors.

Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.

Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer’s computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.

Based on the 3 years PhotoArtPeople (www.PhotoArtPeople.com) has been printing our customers’ photos on canvas, we have learned a lot about what types of photos people prefer to have enlarged and printed on canvas.  For those of you not familiar with what a photo-canvas is, let me explain.

Photos to canvas are a relatively new way to display your favorite photographs.  Unlike a standard photo enlargement that is matted and framed, canvas photos are actually printed directly on canvas and stretched over an internal wood frame, ready to hang.  At PhotoArt People our artists take your photo and enhance it to make it “canvas-worthy”.  The image is then printed on museum quality canvas using a special printer, and sprayed with a protective laminate to make it last 100 years.  Finally the canvas is stretched by hand over a wood frame “gallery-wrap” style, meaning the imaged canvas covers the edges to provide a nice finished look. Photo canvas prints make great gifts and are a great way to show off your favorite photos.  “Out of the photo album and onto the wall” is what we say.

So what are the most popular types of photos people choose?

Wedding photos – This is the single most popular type of photo we get.  Most are professionally posed but we also see informal shots of the happy couple.  Great wedding gift idea. Children – Photos of kids is a close second.  These can be portraits or simple snapshots.  The snapshots usually make the best canvas prints because they catch the child doing something spontaneous.  And the grandparents love to get these as gifts. Group family photos – This is also a popular type photo, and is usually printed in the larger sizes.  Most people like these over the fireplace or in a prominent spot in the living room. Special events – Graduation, anniversaries, special awards, family reunions – all make great opportunities for canvas prints.  People like to memorialize these milestone events with a special photo to capture it for posterity. Pets - We get a lot of pet photos as well. These make particularly great digital paintings (BrushTouch) because the fur provides a beautiful texture for the artists to work with. Vacation/Travel – We have received photos taken all over the world.  One of my favorites was one taken at Machu Picchu in Peru with a llama in the foreground.  Vacation photo-canvases are a great way to rekindle memories from past adventures.

The fact of the matter is that any photo can be transformed into a photo canvas.  The most important thing is that it be special to you in some way.  At PhotoArt People we can fix most imperfections, but you need to come up with that special photo.    

Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don’t confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry. Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer’s attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer’s attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer’s LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors. Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer’s computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.

Based on the 3 years PhotoArtPeople (www.PhotoArtPeople.com) has been printing our customers’ photos on canvas, we have learned a lot about what types of photos people prefer to have enlarged and printed on canvas.  For those of you not familiar with what a photo-canvas is, let me explain.

Photos to canvas are a relatively new way to display your favorite photographs.  Unlike a standard photo enlargement that is matted and framed, canvas photos are actually printed directly on canvas and stretched over an internal wood frame, ready to hang.  At PhotoArt People our artists take your photo and enhance it to make it “canvas-worthy”.  The image is then printed on museum quality canvas using a special printer, and sprayed with a protective laminate to make it last 100 years.  Finally the canvas is stretched by hand over a wood frame “gallery-wrap” style, meaning the imaged canvas covers the edges to provide a nice finished look. Photo canvas prints make great gifts and are a great way to show off your favorite photos.  “Out of the photo album and onto the wall” is what we say.

So what are the most popular types of photos people choose?

The fact of the matter is that any photo can be transformed into a photo canvas.  The most important thing is that it be special to you in some way.  At PhotoArt People we can fix most imperfections, but you need to come up with that special photo.