People are moved by what they see, and if you plan on moving people to buy your product, it’s important that what they see looks attractive. That’s what product photographers are for, they help you take beautiful, professional products that help you sell your business.
If you’ve never hired a product photographer before, figuring out how to go about finding one and then actually hiring them might come off as a huge chore. But don’t worry, in this guide, I outline all you need to know to hire your first product photographer the easy and fun way.
The hiring pitfall
One mistake many business owners make when they set out to hire a product photographer is assume that every photographer can shoot product photography. Well, yeah, every photographer can shoot product photography. However, only skilled photographers can do ‘good’ product photography shoots.
Product photography goes beyond pointing a camera at a product and clicking the shutter button. It’s a hugely nuanced field of photography that requires an understanding of perspective, scene and props setting, and photo manipulation, among other things.
When you want striking product photos that can move end consumers towards a sale, you need to make sure your designated product photographer has these skills and more.
What to look out for in the ideal product photographer
The ideal product photographer for your business is a seasoned professional photographer with significant experience to his/her name. but to be more specific, any photographer you’re planning on hiring should;
Have the requisite equipment set up
Product photography usually happens in a controlled environment with custom lighting, props, and everything else required to simulate the perfect matching scenery for your product. Any product photographer worth his/her onions should have these on hand in their photo studio.
A capable camera matched to a fitting lens is also an important requirement, but most photographers will have this, where they tend to cut corners is with the props, staging and lighting equipment which are equally as important
How to test this
Simply ask – what equipment do you use to shoot your photos? Can I see examples of the props you plan on using? Can I sample images (to assess lighting)? If they have a picture of their studio set up and are willing to share it, all the better just anything really to give you a sense of their studio set-up.
Be creative and ingenious
I cannot emphasize the importance of creativity and ingenuity as critical skills of a photographer. It is what guarantees that your picture will not end up like just another bland product image.
Remember, the goal of product photography is showcasing your products in a way that stands out from the crowd. If it’s bland and uninspiring, you’re basically diminishing your product value, and invariably your sales.
How to test this
Ask for portfolios. As with any other form of photography, sample images from the photographers previous shoots should give you an idea of their creative tendencies. You’re not looking for someone radical with their style. No, you want someone who can stand out without doing too much – someone who knows how to turn simplicity into complex awe-inspiring images.
Skilled with image editing or has someone who’s skilled with image editing
There’s just so much that can be done with a camera and lights in the studio. Sometimes the final touch required to take a product photo from ooh, nice, to wow, great must happen on editing software. You want a product photographer who knows his way around these apps (things like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and InDesign).
How to test for this
Ask for before and after photos from shoots they’ve done – that’s photos before editing was applied and after. This should give you an idea of how good they are with image editing and photo manipulation.
Note, however, that not all product photographers will honor this request, which is fine. In that case, simply ask them which software they use for editing and then assess their portfolio pictures to see how polished they look. Most of the polishing and finetuning are works of image editing.
Industry experience
Industry experience is how much experience they have shooting product photography, specifically how much experience they have shooting a product like yours. Now, it’s entirely possible for a product photographer to not have any experience shooting products like yours, and that doesn’t immediately make them bad product photographers.
If everything else checks out and this is the only failing requirement, it still makes sense to enter a contract with the product photographer. Think of this requirement as the cherry topping to the cake of a perfect product photographer. If they have it, great. If they don’t and check out every box, then fine too.
Now you know the basics to look out for, let’s head on to where you can find product photographers who have these essential skillsets.
Where to find freelance product photographers
There are two routes to take when you need to find a product photographer:
- The local product photographer route
- The freelance product photographer route
Finding a local product photographer
Local product photographers have studios close to where you live. Most times, you get to know about these guys – the good ones — through referrals and recommendations from friends and family.
How to go about it
The best way to start your search for a local photographer is to ask around. Ask friends, family, colleagues, and if you’re part of online marketplaces or groups, it makes sense to ask there as well.
Why ask? I’m sure there’s an abundance of photographers willing to do product photography gigs around you, but the point is finding someone who’s good enough. If they’re coming off the recommendation of a family or friend, then chances are they can recreate the good service that earned them that recommendation.
If recommendations are not forthcoming, you can then switch to doing an online search. A simple ‘product photographer near me’ google search should do the trick.
With this method, you must be careful with your selection process (I’ll address how to screen a product photographer later in this piece). Reason is the product photographers you see on search results might not necessarily be the best option for you.
The top search result listing holds that spot because their profiles are well optimized, but that’s not a guarantee of quality service delivery.
You need to scrutinize deeply to ensure you’re not getting a product photographer who’s better at SEO than they are at product photography.
The advantages of going local with product photography
Local means you can be involved in the shoot
With local product photography, the photo studio is usually nearby, which means you can witness the shoot for the experience or to make sure everything goes exactly how you’d want it to
There’s no need to ship your products
Because the studio is nearby, there’s no need for the sometimes expensive trans-state or trans country shipment of your products.
It’s faster
Local product photography takes less time to get your products out and ready for use. Primarily because there’s no need to ship products but also because the time it takes to go from booking to shooting is significantly shorter.
With some local product photographers, you can simply walk into the studio, get your shot done and walk out with ready photos the same day.
The disadvantages of going local with product photography
Excellent local product photographers might be hard to find
By excellent, I mean someone who meets all the equipment, creativity, and experience requirements we outlined earlier. And it’s easy to understand why; going local limits your talent selection pool, so you have fewer product photography candidates to work with.
Finding a freelance product photographer
You can think of freelance product photographers as remote product photography contractors. Most of your interaction with them will be online and through freelance product photography websites.
How to go about it
The first step to finding a freelance photographer is identifying your needs. Unlike the case with local product photographers, where you can pretty determine what you need done on the fly, maybe on the actual day of the shoot even, with freelance photographers, you need to have a clear understanding of what your requirements are from the get-go.
Why? This is important for assessing the freelancer to see if they match your needs. It’s also an important requirement for finding a matching freelance product photographer, as I’ll now demonstrate.
Once you have your needs in hand, the next step is to navigate to a freelance website and attempt searching for a match with these needs as a keyword. For instance, if you need a product photographer who knows how to shoot jewelry products, your search phrase will be ‘jewelry product photographer.’ If your job is just the generic product photography gig then a simple ‘product photographer’ search should do the trick.
Top freelance product photography websites usually have a dedicated product photography section, so you can navigate there yourself to start your search as well.
From the search results, you should be able to pick out a couple of potential hires. I’ll go over what you need to do to sort through these potential hires to pick your best candidate later in this piece.
The advantages of hiring a freelance product photographer
Freelance product photographers are usually very good at what they do
From experience, you’re more likely to find an excellent product photographer if you go the freelance route. They’re usually more professional with their approach, have a better stock of equipment and possess better in-depth industry experience.
Freelance opens you to a greater selection of product photography talent
With freelancers, your talent sourcing pool is wider, so you have a larger selection of product photographers to make your pick from. This can come in handy if you have special needs. Again maybe you need someone who’s well versed in shooting jewelry products. It might be hard to find that kind of talent residing near you.
The disadvantages of hiring a freelance product photographer
You have to ship the product to their location
And that means extra waiting times, more expenses and greater risk. There’s the possibility that your shipment might not get to the product photographer.
The time from negotiations to final photos is considerably longer
Not just because of the extra shipping time but also because freelance product photographers usually have more clients all stacked up in a photo schedule. If you’re hiring one, you’ll be placed on that schedule as opposed to, say, walking into a studio near you and getting your products shot on the same day.
Screening a product photographer
You now know what to look out for in the ideal product photographer and where to start your search, but how exactly do you choose an ideal product photographer for your business.
Assess their portfolio
Ask your potential hires for links to their portfolio pages or for samples that can be directly sent to you. Also, inquire about their experience by asking how many clients they’ve worked with in the past.
Portfolios and past jobs are the one sure-fire way of gauging the expertise and skill of any product photographer. Ideally, you’d want portfolio pictures of products similar to yours but not every experienced photographer might have this.
What every experienced product photographer should, however, have is a good number of past clients. And by good number, I mean in the range of 15 – 20 and above. Someone with less than five past jobs should be assumed a newcomer until proven otherwise.
Being a new product photographer is not bad, but you’ll need to take extra care to verify that they have the skill and equipment to complete your job.
Check their reviews
If you’re using a freelance site like Fiverr or Upwork, then assessing the reviews of potential hires is a simple task. If you’re using a local product photographer, however, it becomes a tad bit trickier.
For the latter, what you want to do is search for their studio online using Google to see if they have a Google My Business account. A GMB account is a business account hosted on Google.
Google allows people who’ve worked with such businesses to leave a review on this profile. It looks something like this.
Now unlike Freelance site reviews which are harder to fake, GMB reviews can be easily faked. Anyone can leave a review; the only requirement is a Gmail account. Nothing stops a business owner from recruiting all members of his extended family to drop glowing reviews on their profile.
What’s the implication of this? Easy, take all reviews you see here with a pinch of salt – including the negative ones; they could be from a competitor product photography business.
That said, going through the reviews should give you a general idea of how the business operates and what their service is like. A persistent mention of an issue in several reviews from dissimilar review accounts should trigger your spider senses. Ask questions of the product photographer and see if they provide a reasonable response to justify that issue.
Checking reviews of product photographers on freelance sites like Fiverr and Upwork is, like I said, very easy. Just navigate to the product photographers profile page and assess the review panel. From there, you should be able to see what other verified clients who’ve worked with them think of their service.
Making sense of product photographer reviews on Fiverr and Upwork
While it’s definitely harder to fake reviews on freelance websites like Fiverr and Upwork, you still need to approach reviews here from a strategic viewpoint. Here’s how I do it;
Ignore the five-star reviews
Virtually every product photographer you’ll meet through search on these sites will have an abundance of five-star reviews. Their search algorithms make it so that you only see the best product photographers (sorted by the number of five-star reviews) on the platform.
Focus more on the three to one-star reviews
These are reviews from aggrieved parties, people who’ve experienced a disservice with the product photographer. Their story gives a strong indication of your chances of experiencing a similar disservice.
If a three-star reviewer complains of something that matters to you, then that chance goes up. The same thing goes if there are several one-star reviews highlighting a similar issue with the service.
Schedule a consultation/interview
Through the portfolio and review check steps, you should’ve trimmed your list of potential hires to about two or three product photographers. Now’s the time to schedule an interview.
The interview phase is when you double down on the details and seek any extra clarifications. At this point, you should be way past the ‘is product photographer good enough’ phase and headed into the ‘how good of a fit is he/she to my product photography project.
Here are a few questions to help you assess that;
What’s your rate, how will it be paid, and what exactly does it cover?
This should give you a general idea of how much it’ll cost you to take on the services of the product photographer. Some photographers set fixed prices for shoots; others charge per hour.
Regardless of their pay rate and structure, you need to clarify exactly what you’ll get for your money. Will the shoot involve props? Will the photos be edited? How many photos will you get? How many products will you shoot per unit charge?
What do you need to get started?
Obviously, they’ll need to have a copy of the product, but some product photographers might need extra details like the tone, styling and color you’d prefer your pictures to be set in.
Make sure to be as explicit as possible when defining your requirements for the project, especially when you’re dealing with a freelance product photographer.
Who handles shipping?
Who handles the shipping of the product, and will the product be returned back. This is only applicable to freelance product photographers, but it’s an important detail to iron out from the get-go.
Who owns the photo copyrights?
Many business owners skip this very important question when hiring a product photographer. Important because it determines whether the photographer can use your product photos for their own gain after submitting them to you as per your agreement.
Ideally, you want a product photographer that transfers all photo copyrights to you once they’re done. This means you’re the only person allowed to use said photos for commercial purposes. Most product photographers will do this.
However, there’s a propensity for them to charge higher if all the copyrights belong to you. I’d say it’s a well worth investment – it doesn’t make sense to take photos of your product one day and see it on a photo marketplace the next day available for purchase to your competitors.
Your interview with your candidates can extend past these questions – they’re only a boilerplate to get you started. Whatever seems important to you, make sure to ask questions. Overall the answers each potential hire gives should point you in the direction of the best fit product photographer for your project. Once you’ve made a selection, it’s on to actually hiring the product photographer.
Make sure to sign a contract, so everyone is clear on what’s expected of them. If you’re using a freelance site like Fiverr, then this is easier because they have an inbuilt contract functionality to help.
Conclusion
It’s sounds like a lot of work, but in reality, it’s not that difficult to go through the entire process of hiring a product photographer. What you need to understand, however, is that each step is important; being meticulous will save you the heartache that comes with a botched or, worse still, uncompleted product photography project. So take your time, be nitpicky and detailed, ask questions and listen to your gut. You’ll be happy you did when you get excellent product photos well and capable of boosting sales and your business.
