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Product
& Commercial Photography |
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Client Site Training in Digital Product Photography!
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Product Photography is a specialty and here's some clues why...
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Product Photography: Time burners
The price of product photography charged to a client hides a large number of variables the product photographer must master to become profitable. It is not uncommon to get stuck on one object for several hours, put it aside, and come back later with a different approach. Once success has been achieved the product photographer can store for later recall the winning studio configuration. Waiting for client approval of proofs, starting and stopping a project, building props, looking for unique backgrounds to add value, assembling a product, polishing, ironing & pressing fabrics, repairing a retail package, researching various image styles are all (hopefully) built into the price a client is willing to pay for product photography. |
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Product Photography: Shopping around for the
right resource
Have you ever shopped for a dentist or doctor. Ever decided to go with a doctor who charges half the going price for a procedure? Think not. Ok, how about a house painter, electrician, plumber, or repairman? Do you really want the results of the cheapest price? Product photography requires equipment and the skills to not only deploy the equipment usefully, but to communicate options and decision points to a client. The Web has a plentiful array of image photos demonstrating every level of skill or lack thereof. Product photography images serve a critically important function in web commerce: the clear and distinct representation of a product. Customers base decisions on where to buy products on a handful of common sense points. Price is arguably an important tangible point. Visible product characteristics are another and probably the foundation for buyer confidence in any given product. Quality product photography is the resource to win buyer confidence and overcome competition. |
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Product Photography: Visioning the results
The design of a product photography image is to some degree an art. How many different ways can a product be shot and still be successful at achieving the goals of clear and distinct representation. More times than not clients will send their products to us and say "shoot 'em". When we ask to see the pages where they will be displayed and read the copy to accompany the shot we get all sorts of responses. But the most common response is "it doesn't matter. I just want it to look good."! We encourage clients to walk with us through the display of finished product photography images and help them refine their vision of what is important about their product to their customers. The results give us a platform to further explore possibilities and capture the object in a fashion to serve the client needs for a long time to come. |
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Product Photography: Cost amortization
The price of a product photography image is a bear for clients to deal with, especially those who have not budgeted for professional photography services. Although some clients quickly realize what a quality product image will accomplish for them they some times forget how to apportion the cost of that image. Even though you must pay for photography in advance of acquiring sales revenue for products, the payback is the key issue. If your site advertises one hundred items for sale the cost of product photography for those items might be $3000. During the first year let's assume total unit sales are 1000 to keep the math simple. The second year 1500 and the third year is 2000. The math here is simple. The original 100 images cost $3000. The total unit sales for all three years is 4500. The photography cost per unit sold is $0.66 and still declining because the products have not changed their appearance and you don't need to re-shoot them! The total unit sales life associate with a product image dictates the final cost of the image to your balance sheet. Granted some items change every year or model and sometimes the packaging changes. Keeping the averages in mind, the equation detailed above is accurate and should represent how one might manage the cost of product photography. |
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