3 Steps To Better Inanimate Object Photos

One of our blog readers The Moldy Cannoli asked us how to take beter photos of inanimate objects for blog posts.  If you look on her blog, her photos look good already.  But here are some tips for others that might be useful.  

The other day Jess found a snail shell outside, so I'm going to use that as my example.  I took the two photos below with my iphone 3gs which is not a good camera at all.  I purposely choose to use this "camera" to show that you can achieve decent results with any camera.  

The first example is the snail shell on a dining room table.  It's a snapshot, the object is placed in the center of the frame and you can sort of tell what it is.  But lets talk about what makes this photo  a not so good photo.  

1.  The first thing is that your eye is always going to be drawn to the BRIGHTEST part of the photo.  That happens to be the glare from the sun on the table.  So automatically my eye is drawn away from the subject.  

2.  The piece of junk mail on the table in the upper left hand corner is also distracting.  

3.  Lastly, you can't see much detail in the shell and the lighting is rather flat.  

For the "better" photo I took the shell over near a window.  The shell is actually on an afhgan hanging over the back of the couch.  The shell is probably about a foot away from the window which is to the left.  Window lighting is ALWAYS flattering, it's soft lighting because its indirect.   It won't be soft lighting if the sun is beating directly into that window though, so pick a window on the side of your house that the light is indirect.  The side lighting gives the shell more "shape" because of the light and shadows.  (Not flat like our last photo)  

For this photo I moved in closer which does TWO things.  It allows you to see more detail, AND it eliminates a distracting background.  I should have cropped this photo at the top and bottom so you were really focusing on the shell.  The folds in the afghan at the top are distracting.

I also positioned the shell in a way that was more flattering.  I remember someone who was hired to photograph some jewelry and instead of laying the pieces flat on a table he found a small peice of drift wood and hung the earrings so that they would display more in their natural state.  Sometimes simple adjustments to presentation will make or break your photo.  

So three steps to improve your photos of inanimate objects are...

1.  flattering lighting
2.  positioning the object in a flattering way
3.  non-distracting background


Did you find these tips helpful?  What other advice would you give?  Let us know in the comments!