S2E5 | How to Improve Your Product Photography | Crystal Creative Business Success

Welcome to Season 2 Episode 5 of the Creative Business Success Podcast! Crystal over at Crystal Clear Photography is a killer product photographer. If you're a product-based creative entrepreneur and you haven't checked out her work, you definitely should! I invited her onto the podcast today to share her best tips to help YOU improve your product photography. It doesn't have to be as hard as it may seem!

Here's a cheat sheet of some of the episode highlights:
Crystal's intro, 0:59
How to improve your product photography lighting, 1:56
How to handle product photography shadows, 3:12
Should you use ring lights in product photography? 4:20
What to use instead of ring lights, 4:39
How to style your art photography or product photography, 7:03
Know your branding! Listen to Episode 2 of Season 2, 7:34
Why knowing your ideal audience is important for product photography, 7:57
How to use your ideal audience to style your product photography, 9:05
Tips for lifestyle product photography, 10:39
Taking photographs of your art, 12:08
Get even more product photography tips and tools! 12:27
Creating a story with your product photography and brand photography, 15:19
How to edit your product photographs, 16:21
Color temperature in product photography, 17:46
Should you use Lightroom on your phone? 19:07
Lightroom Mobile vs. desktop, 20:18
Storing your product photographs, 21:48
Make time to practice your product photography! 22:45
Check out Crystal's product photography course and presets, 23:32
Where to connect with Crystal, 24:59
Let's dive deeper into a few of these key takeaways...

1 | Lighting is key to product photographyA lot can be forgiven in product photography if you have good lighting. After all, if you can't see the product in the photo, you're probably going to ignore it! Crystal recommends using natural light as much as possible, but if you don't have access to a location with good natural light for your product photography, there are alternatives.
Crystal recommends avoiding ring lights unless you're doing beauty photography or something along those lines. However, softbox lighting kits are a great alternative that won't break the bank. I finally bought a softbox kit after Crystal and I recorded this episode and it's crazy how much of a difference it can make!
If all you can control is the lighting for your product photography, DO IT. It's the first step toward professional-looking product photos and can be the difference between someone buying your product or ignoring it.

2 | Keep your audience in mind when styling your product photographyKnowing who your ideal audience is can be an important factor when it comes to styling your product photography. Your ideal audience may be different than the audience of another creative entrepreneur and because of that, you may need to style your product photography differently than they do. If you style your product photography for the wrong audience, they won't connect with it and you could lose sales!
If you don't know your ideal audience's tastes very well, check out Episode 2 of this season and soak up Britt and Kelsey's tips. Establishing a solid brand, including knowing your ideal audience, can have a big...