Amazon Making Product Photography Difficult for DIY

Amazon has some pretty strict rules for the primary product shots making it very difficult for many DIY photographers. The Amazon photography guide is 4 pages long and very strict about how your product shots are composed. In a nutshell, your product must be laid out in a way that is consistent with how the product is worn, applies to jewelry and apparel. Must occupy 75% of the photo, be in complete focus, be at least 1000 pixels on the long side, and be on a pure white background. The are some more rules depending on your items. Additional photos beyond the initial product shot can use models, props, and environmental locations to highlight product features.

Product on pure white.

Of late, about 1/2 my work has been shooting to Amazon specs. Not as much fun as more stylized photography but a necessary part of the business.

Having trouble meeting the requirements? Give me a call and lets discuss your project.

The Holidays Are Here!

Many of our prospective new clients are gearing up for the Holidays and I have been busily doing the salesmen routine explaining our service and what a use license is and why there are set-up fees. As often as I am explaining these aspects of the business I thought I would boil it down to the core concepts here.

First, use licenses.
Licensing can be a very complex and tortuous legal web with image use being highly restrictive as to when, how long, what geographical region use is restricted to (local or international), and even what media the images are used in (print, web, billboard, TV to name a few). This type of license are covered under a broad description of "Rights Managed". ProdPhoto.com uses the simplest licensing scheme of all, "Stock License". The essentials are that you as the client can use the images in any media, in any location, for as long as you want. No recurrent fees or charges.
Next, set-up fees.
Set-up fees vary from job to job but generally cover the cost of dressing the studio for your job. It can include consumables (wear and tear on equipment, mounting wax, strobe bulbs), special order props( pink background paper?) and special equipment rentals(lenses, strobes, mannequins)  typically used only for one project.

Here are some Holiday decorations I just finished that didn't require much in special equipment but took considerable time in set-up. Everything had to be glued down and positioned exactly.

Group shot on a glass sheet.

Everything has been glued in place.

Lifestyle

Really Cool Stuff from Kenya!

Welcome "Stuff from Kenya" to the ProdPhoto family! Stuff from Kenya imports upscale handcrafts directly from the craftsmen and craft-women. Unique leather goods, belts and handbags all one of a kind and a beautiful addition to any wardrobe. The website is not yet up  but you can visit them on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/StuffFromKenya and buy on-line through eBay.
Just started with the composition and lighting for the belts. Not complete yet but here is a sample.

Shot to Amazon's strict standards.

Close up detail of the deft hand work
securing each bead to the belt.

More on Dixie Belle Paints

Dixie Belle Paint is expanding their offerings almost every quarter as the demand for unique craft colors explodes. This company offers the highest quality artisan chalk paints on the market. This month 5 new colors hi the catalog: Holy Guacamole, Colonel Mustard, Cobalt Blue, Buttercream, and Lucky Lavender. Good thing we document our set and lighting. We can go back to any client shoot and recreate the exact same photos using the new product keeping the continuity between shoots the same. The catalog photos all look as if they were shot in the same session.  As always the client can download both TIFF and JPG files immediately and we always send a DVD with both formats and supporting documents by US mail.

Full set ready for the website and catalog.

Dixie Belle Paint can be purchased on-line at http://www.dixiebellepaint.com

and now for something completely different..

decals, and not just your everyday run of the mill standard flat bumper sticker types, these are 3D and look really special. The hard part is to make these look as good in a photo as they do in real-life. The task is to shoot the 4 colors on a neutral white  at several different angles to show off the raised texture unique to this product. The problem is to keep the background uniformly lit. 

Initial shot with minimal post processing. Notice the slight
color variation caused by a slight difference in the color
temperatures of the lights from left to right (cooler lamp
on the right). Something we'll fix in the finals.

The solution was to raise the decals on a glass sheet 6 inches above the background and light the subject and background separately. 2 lights for the product and 3 lights for the background. A mono-light with a 24 inch softbox from camera right to light the product and the right side of the background. A mono-light with a 2 inch snoot off camera left to provide hard shadows showing off the texture and spilling onto the left side of the background. Finally a speed light with a 12 inch softbox to smooth out any shadows on the background. 

The angles shots required a different approach. The background showed an annoying drop shadow from the samples so we placed the product directly on the white background material. This got rid of the drop shadow but required  more post processing in Photoshop.

The small shadow in this series helped bring out the 3D design.

We would like to welcome Dixie Belle Paint to our family of clients. We have been commissioned to update their extensive catalog of products with professional true to color catalog shots on white sweep and compose a series of environmental shots showcasing the country craft quality of the product.

Primary line of  27 paints including colors like "Florida Orange" and "Flamingo"

Natural China hair brushes.

Shooting bottled product on a white sweep is not particularly difficult, but, keeping colors accurate can be a challenge. Here the black glaze is actually blue before the coating dries. Having a fully color calibrated equipment and workflow is the key to faithfully reproducing the unique colors in this or any other product line. Controlled lighting with a known color temperature, 6500°K, is only one part of the mix. A fully calibrated camera and workstation are also required.

Glazes and clear coats.

Glaze close up detail shot.

The camera is custom balanced to a standard gray card and also RGB values are calibrated to a known standard to keep the shots consistent across the entire range of hues and re-calibrated before each set change. The workstation is calibrated weekly with a colorimeter. We use only one workstation for final processing to eliminate any hardware variables that could slip into the process.

Kudzu green.

Kudzu green with neutral gray card.

The white sweeps are actually shot to light gray to stay consistent across the product line and allow the white colors to stand out more. There is more than enough separation to "knock out" the products if needed later.

New Product Launch - Natural Sponge

The client is starting a new line of products on Amazon and has to be shot to Amazon's specs. Not the most glamorous work, but important. Not all jobs afford you the greatest creative latitude, sometime  you just shoot to spec.
Natural sponges are becoming all the rage after many years of declining sales. Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks (http://www.ctsfl.us/) is about the only place where sponge diving survives in the USA to this day and one of my favorite places to visit in the local area. So I was very happy to get the opportunity to shoot  this new line for Better Living Labs (http://www.betterlivinglabs.com). All the sponges are sourced and hand picked directly from vendors in this small community.

Local gift shop at the docks displays a variety

of Grass and other sponges

Sponges range in quality and variety from decorative Grass Sponges to the smaller tightly celled Wool Sponges used mostly in cosmetics and in the healthcare industry. 

This may be a small job for the studio but it deserves all the care and attention demanded by our larger clients. The client wants the colorful packaging to shine and the quality of the product to come through for this series shot to Amazon's catalog specs. (shot on white sweep w/o any props). Here is a sample of the initial proofs.

Just a modest amount of post processing, basically 

strait out of the camera.

With items like this I like to shoot with a light meter. Lots of white will fool the camera light sensor into under exposing the shot where an incidence meter can not be fooled.

And some of the finals...

Sponges on Amazon

ProdPhoto Commercial Product Photography

In the midst of the summer months, I find myself in the quiet time before the holiday catalog and advertising crush, a great time to rekindle the urge to write.

First of all, let me introduce my company and what ProdPhoto.com does. ProdPhoto.com is a product photography shop that caters to new business and artists that want professional high end photography services but are new to what can often be the complex and expensive world of commercial photography. Usage licensing,  copyright issues, sample selection and preparation,  final image file type and sizing, and archiving are all simplified and direct. Above all ProdPhoto stays within your budget as little as $10 per finished image.




You tell us what you plan to use the images for and ProdPhoto will provide you with the original high resolution print files(TIFF format @240 dpi up to 24mpx) and any other format required, re-sized to fit your needs(ie. JPG @72 dpi suitable for the web). Fully cleaned up or "Photoshopped" images that render true colors and 1st class results.

Reproduction of artisan works which stay true to color, texture and proportion can be very difficult without the proper equipment. ProdPhoto's professionals use modern industry leading equipment and software to render your creations accurately. No color shifting, no spatial distortion only your design comes through.

90% of what ProdPhoto does is small tabletop items like jewelry, paintings, pottery and other similar items. The other 10%  are slightly larger items like clothing apparel, larger paintings and art pieces.



Well, that's it for today, I have run out of time and have to go into the studio and shoot some antique pottery. Be back soon!