Product Photography: Q&A With One Of Sydney’s Best Product Photographers – Wenbo Zhao
Excellent product photography is an essential prerequisite for any e-commerce and Business’s website. It is a no brainer that without professional photography that enhances the quality of the product, you’ll miss out on a lot of sales. As a Marketing Agency, we understand the importance of outstanding imagery and in this article, we’ll discuss it even further with our colleague, and collaborator, Wenbo Zhao – one of the best product photographers in Sydney.
Wenbo, what is the difference between professional product photography and products photos taken by a non-specialized photographer?
Consistency and intentions.
Professional product photographers have a solid understanding of how business works and they can produce images that are not only pleasing to the viewers, also achieve better clarity of brand identity visually.
Nonspecialized photographers are seemed to be “the master of all trade” but at the same time, they can not be the expert on neither of the areas.
Professional product photography is very technical regarding lighting, retouching, and loads of works in preproduction. Which most people do not see in real life and do not understand what professional product photographers do when working with a commercial project.
The intention of professional product photography is to inspire action and drive impact on the brand’s visual content. We work according to the brand’s visual element needs, not based on a trend on the internet or social media.
Is Professional Product Photography worth it?
I don’t want to say a “yes” to everyone, because it will be too general.
You don’t need professional photography when you are selling a product on the Facebook market or selling some homemade products to local friends or family.
However, if you selling products as a business or starting out a brand, then professional product photography is an essential service that you need to have. Period.
After COVID hit the world in 2019, more local businesses have moved online, E-commerce is also drastically growing in Australia and globally. The competition of online sales is tough than ever, there are too many options for consumers to choose from, the actual shopping experience has been replaced by the images and videos online.
The real question is no longer about “Is Professional Product Photography worth it?”, it should be “Can you afford to NOT have professional product images?”
What are the 3 principles of excellent product photography?
- Visually appealing
- Clear brand identification
- Inspire shopping action
You are also specialized in 3d modelling and CGI: what is the difference between traditional product photography and computer-generated images?
Traditional product photography requires a physical studio cost to fit all the camera equipment and lights to produce. And a prop stylist or creative director needs to be onsite to assist the shoot (additional cost). After the photoshoot, product images need to be processed and retouched, and the product retouching services often request more time to do compare with other types of photography. (fees involved again)
For CGI images:
We only need some basic reference images of the products or even the product prototype to initiate the project (Our clients often get product design details from the manufacturers, which helps a lot for accurate modelling)
Then We can 3D model the product and creating special props and scenes to produce photorealistic images with way less retouching work afterwards. It not only saves a lot of time and money for our clients but also provides options for reproducing new images for future promotional events. Because we do not need to remodel the products again and we can just design new scenes according to the promotional theme, and render another set of images. Which is even quicker to produce than the previous project.
