Product Photography Portfolio: Guide with Examples (2024)

Have you ever wondered what it takes to create a product photography portfolio that will win you clients?

So, you’ve got the lighting dialed in, the angles mastered, and those products looking sharper than ever. Now what? It’s time to build your professional product photography portfolio - the silent salesperson that helps you sign clients and tell your visual story.

Your portfolio is your most important marketing tool as a product photographer. It’s where potential clients will see your work and decide if you are the right photographer for their needs.

This blog post will share insights on product photography, the importance of an online portfolio, how to build one, and tips to help you win clients and grow your business.

Product Photography Unraveled

So, what is product photography? It is a type of commercial photography that helps accurately and attractively showcase a product.

Product photographers employ a wide range of angles, lighting, and backdrops to highlight an item. This comprises details of its design and its use in real life.

Good product photography enables consumers to choose between similar products available in the market.

How to Build a Product Photography Portfolio

Launch a product photography portfolio website for yourself to get noticed. Whether or not you have professional experience, setting up your portfolio is recommended. The sooner you build your portfolio, the sooner you can start signing professional clients or even product photography jobs.

We recommend including only your best work in the portfolio, not every other photography project you have worked on in your professional career.

Here are 4 steps to start building your product photography portfolio:

1. Pick a Top-notch Website Builder
2. Focus on Product Photography Skills
3. Focus on the right equipment and tools
4. Shoot, edit, and put it out!

1. Pick a Top-notch Platform to Develop your Portfolio Site

Choosing a website builder that suits your needs is also essential as a photographer. It is hard to create and maintain a portfolio when you go with the platform that comes with its intricacies.

Photographers need to become more adept at coding and require a website builder that allows them to build and manage a portfolio without any coding expertise.

Pixpa is an all-in-one, no-code website builder designed for photographers. It comes packed with an integrated online store, a dynamic blog, client galleries, ecommerce galleries, a photo gallery app, beautiful templates, and much more. Let’s look at them briefly:

• It has over 150+ elegant, customizable, and responsive templates. You can flexibly switch to different templates even after the site is live.
• Its built-in online store helps you to build one quickly without any coding experience and start selling in minutes. Your store for ecommerce product photography will have the same look and feel as the rest of your website.
• The ecommerce galleries allow you to sell your work online through prints, canvases, gallery wraps, etc.
• The client galleries enable the clients to easily view, proof, purchase, and download photos and videos.
• You can easily create a mobile gallery app to share a sneak peek of your product photos, and the clients can access your work anytime.
• The built-in SEO and marketing tools help you grow your audience instantly. When customers search for ‘Product photography near me, ' you want your business to appear first.
• Its 24/7 live support offers guidance and help around the clock. For help articles and instant guidance, check out Pixpa’s knowledge base.

Pixpa has helped several photographers launch their product photography business online. These are some of those product photography portfolio examples to inspire you:

1. Gi Bertoldi

Giovana Bertoldi’s fashion product photography portfolio has navigation links, with unique background images for each, right on the homepage. It leverages Pixpa’s multilingual capabilities, with Portuguese and English options available. The product gallery gives us a slideshow of a wide range of products on display. It also uses Pixpa’s ecommerce galleries to display and sell printed items.

2. Joash Manning

Josh Manning is a lifestyle and food photographer based in Denmark. This website is an excellent example of a food product photography portfolio powered by Pixpa. The homepage presents a select gallery of product photos with different camera angles and image compositions. The colorful gallery of photos, in grid format, makes it all the more attractive for the viewers.

3. Liza Razumova

This photography portfolio presents photography samples, such as portraits, products, commerce, and couples and families. As you scroll up, the homepage is adorned with large banner images with navigation links to work samples. The product page is especially stuffed with a select list of masterfully captured product images. Details about product photography pricing help viewers to make decisions about whether or not to hire.

4. McKinnon Galloway photography

McKinnon Galloway is a portrait and lifestyle photographer. She communicates using deaf technology and uses silence to her advantage by focusing on capturing perfect shots without distractions. Her homepage gives you a link to her work samples from her stint in photography. The vivid colors and excellence in the product photos are palpable.

5. Jakim Diaz

Jakim Diaz is a photographer based in Helsinki. The portrait and product photos captured have stories to tell and showcase the subject in the most stunning light. This is the perfect example if you want to keep your product photography website optimized for simplicity and dark mode views.

2. Focus on Product Photography Skills

Having a diverse set of photography skills helps in building a product photography portfolio. You will be required to shoot big and small products, stylized and white backdrop images, close-up images, and lifestyle product photos. And even have to work with models.

You want your photos to have a consistent look and feel. It can be achieved through your color palette, saturation or filters, composition, location, and the context or situation in which you place your product. Let’s delve into some product photography ideas.

Image size

Your photo's shape and file size should be considered for great product photos. Cameras can be set to shoot in portrait, landscape, or even square (for instance, Instagram posts). Shooting at the highest file size possible, which can be reduced later, is recommended for products. It’s always a best practice to opt for a raw file rather than a compressed Jpeg.

Lighting

Lighting for product photography is an essential component. For outdoor photography, natural light comes to mind. Artificial light works well for beginners as it gives them better control. A predetermined lighting condition provides consistency from shot to shot, helps adjust to dramatic shadows, and helps define shapes.

For example, this photo of a watch taken under a dim night light.

Ensure that you spend some time configuring your setup and taking test shots to capture your products in the best possible way.

Compositions

The classic full product shot is a front and cropped photo, as shown below.

Using angled lines, also called dynamic diagonals, can infuse dynamism into static photos.

You can also follow the rules of thirds by dividing the frame into three columns or rows with your product placed in just one.

Odd groupings can be created as well. Three is usually a winning combination.

Flat lay is another way of taking product photos from above with the product laid out, often alongside other products to tell a story.

Camera viewpoints

For product photography, there are three essential points of view:

• Eye-level shot: When the product is at the same level as the eye
• High shot: When the photo is taken from slightly above the product while looking down
• Low shot: When the photo is taken slightly below the product while looking up

Camera angles

The most common camera angles to shoot products are as follows.

Front angle shots are taken by shooting front-on, from eye-level, usually seen on ecommerce sites.

Profile angle can be taken from the site, usually at eye level. For example, on a shoe seller’s website, the photo is usually taken to make the logo visible.

A three-quarter angle can be achieved by capturing images at about 45 degrees on either side of the product, usually from a high-level angle. This works for displaying multiple products, like a range or contents of a kit.

The back angle can be captured at eye level to provide additional context, like showing details on clothing or a list of product ingredients.

High angles can be achieved using a bird’s eye view and taking product photos from above.

Low-angle shots are the photos taken from the worm’s eye view. This involves shooting upwards to help make products look heroic or impressive in size.

3. Focus on the right equipment and tools

Following are some of the must-haves when you are considering purchasing equipment and tools that you may need for product photography setup:

• Shooting table
• Lightbox
• Studio lights with a mix of strobe and continuous lights
• Tripod
• DSLR cameras
• Reflectors
• Sweep
• Photo editing software for retouching

Read here to answer your burning questions about product photography setup, best camera for product photography, best lens for product photography, and product photography lighting, etc.

4. Shoot, edit, and put it out!

For beginners, we suggest shooting landscape photos, which is easier to start with. Your product should always be the focus of the picture.

Take as many photos as possible because it is easier to delete than set up the shot again.

Once shooting is over, it’s time to select images, zeroing in on the best of the lot.

Then, move on to editing using a photo editor tool that suits your needs.

Benefits of Product Photography

When executed well, product photography can work wonders and provide a range of benefits to your business and your customers. You can even sell your photos on stock photography websites and build an even bigger audience

For businesses:

• Conversion rates: Four-fifths of online shoppers say product photos are highly effective and influential enough to make a purchasing decision. That means good product photos are directly proportional to higher conversion rates.
• Competitive edge: You can improve your competitive advantage over other online retailers through investment in product photography.
• Social sharing: Good product photos have 40% higher chances of being shared by your customers on their social media handles. Therefore, you can also build your brand and improve your social presence.
• Reduction in product returns: In the e-commerce industry, 22% of order returns occurred because buyers found the products looked different in person than in photos. Accurately capturing photos helps minimize the frequency of product returns.
• Visibility: Having an online presence in the form of a product photography portfolio is essential.

For customers:

• Visual browsing: Online shoppers get to browse your store visually through photos, not lengthy descriptions, to see if anything interests them.
• Product evaluation: Customers can review the products before purchasing by looking at multiple types of product photos.
• Product comparison: Customers can compare different items on sale. They can take note of differences and similarities within product photos that could be written or easily palpable in product descriptions.
• Customer engagement: Looking at nicely captured product photos helps customers grow a stronger connection with them.

Types of Product Photography

The most important types of product photography are as follows:

Individual shots

These are simple, straightforward shots of the product wherein the product is usually captured against a white background.

For example, this image of an iPhone is an excellent example of how to do product photography with a white background. This allows the audience to focus on the product.

Detailed shots

It focuses on the particular aspects of the product, for example, photos taken by zooming in on the specifications mentioned on a DSLR camera.

Scale shots

Here, the product is placed along with something else. For example, a small product with a more oversized item or vice versa can be used to gauge the product size.

In this case, there is a difference in the charging cable insertion point in the two phones.

Lifestyle shots

Products, here, are shown as they are used in real life.

Let’s look at an example. Rather than highlighting this headphone within a flat lay, this image showcases it as it sits on the head or hangs on the back of the neck.

Conclusion

High-quality images that showcase your products in the best possible light can help to increase sales and conversions. If you are a product photographer, creating a solid portfolio is essential for attracting new clients and growing your business.

A good product photography portfolio should showcase your best work, highlight your versatility, and be easy for potential clients to navigate. Following the guide, you can create a portfolio to help you win clients and succeed as a product photographer.

Pixpa helps build stunning portfolio websites, especially for creatives like product photographers. It helps in creating a portfolio without the use of any code. Try Pixpa for free and give wings to your product photography business.