Good photos for your business with just a phone: six simple rules

The short answer: a recent phone takes photographs good enough for a website, if the light, the background and the framing are looked after. No camera makes up for a dark, cluttered photo. These six rules cost nothing and make more difference than new equipment.

The six rules

Rule How to do it
1. Natural light Near a window, in the morning or late afternoon. Avoid the flash and direct midday sun: it makes hard shadows.
2. A plain background A blank wall, an empty table, a sheet of card. Take out of the frame whatever is not the product.
3. Clean the lens With a soft cloth. A lens with fingerprints gives photos a veil.
4. Hold steady and at the right height Rest your elbows or the phone. Shoot the product from the front, at its level, not crooked from above.
5. Several views Front, side, a detail, and the product in use. They give confidence to someone who cannot touch it.
6. The same style throughout The same light, background and distance. The site looks like one thing.

After taking them

1 Choose the best and delete the repeats.
2 Crop and straighten, adjust the light a little, without heavy filters that change the product’s colour.
3 Shrink before uploading to the site. A phone photo is several megabytes: Image optimisation and WebP.
4 Give the file a clear name and add alt text: Alt text and file names.
5 Keep the originals somewhere else, off the phone and the site.
Ask permission from whoever appears. A photograph of people, of someone else’s shop or of another brand’s product may carry rights. And a “catalogue” photo copied from elsewhere is not yours: Photos for your website.
Take the photos in one session, with everything prepared. Ten products photographed the same way in one morning come out better than ten photographed on different days.

Want an opinion on your site’s photos? Open a ticket with the address.

Open a support ticket

SEE ALSO

Image optimisation and WebP

Alt text and file names for images: what to write, and what to avoid

Photos for your website: where to get them legally and what to credit

Product descriptions that sell: what to write for each product

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