Taking Product Photos

One does not need a fancy SLR to take decent pictures of soaps. Well, if you have one that is a major advantage, but one must work with what one has, right?

I do have an SLR, but it's big and bulky and I just can't be bothered taking it out of the closet every time I want to take pictures of my soaps, which is like, almost every day. My faithful weapon of choice so far is my iPhone 5, it has a pretty decent camera and all you need is few pieces of white paper and a good lighting. Natural light is good, I usually take my pictures outside in the afternoon, where the sun is not so bright anymore. I also like a wooden colored background, because certain colors don't do very well in an all white setting. The wood makes a real nice contrast.

With a few simple edits here and there, mainly for contrast and brightness, the pictures came pretty decent.

Outside, natural light, afternoon

Inside, artificial light, evening

Outside, natural light, afternoon

You can also do a black background and play with some stuff like rose buds to make it more interesting

Inside, artificial light, evening

As you can see, the options are actually endless. Creativity has no limits. Look around you, things like a simple wooden spoon filled with lavender buds can make a big difference at the end when taking pictures of your lavender soap.

The examples above are only very simple pictures, requiring almost no effort to set up. Like I said before, creativity has no limits, the key to good product pictures does not lie with expensive equipment.