How do I take good product photos at home?

You take good product photos at home with daylight from a window, the phone already in your pocket, and a sheet of white card, and that is very nearly the whole list. What actually makes them hard is that you made the thing yourself, which means by the time you point a camera at it, you can't see it anymore.

By the time I finished one of my bags I'd been looking at it for the best part of 9 hours, and I knew every wobble in the topstitching and exactly where the pattern didn't quite line up at the side seam. So that's what my camera went looking for. Angles chosen to hide the flaws, close-ups taken purely to check whether the flaws showed, and not one honest photo of the thing a stranger would have fallen for, because after 9 hours I couldn't see that thing at all. Hold onto that before we get to light. You're photographing for someone meeting it for the first time, and she isn't looking for the wobble, she doesn't know it exists.

What lighting do I need for product photos at home?

Daylight, from a window, with every bulb in the room switched off. That's the whole lighting setup, and it beats an expensive lighting kit for one boring reason: indoor bulbs are yellow. Your eyes quietly correct for it all day long, your camera doesn't quite manage it, and fabric suffers worst of all.

I spent years photographing quilts and bags in cottons I'd chosen really carefully, and indoor light did things to those colours that used to do my head in a bit. Purples went muddy brown, creams went a sort of nicotine yellow, and no amount of describing the real colour in the listing could talk a buyer out of what the photo had already told her.

The bit nobody believes is that a grey overcast day beats a bright sunny one. Direct sun throws hard black shadows that flatten all the detail and burn out the colour, while cloud spreads the light soft and even across the whole surface, which is exactly what handmade texture wants. So set up next to the window rather than in a sunbeam, and then take one sheet of white paper or foam board and stand it up on the dark side of the product. It bounces window light back into the shadows, it costs pennies, and it's the closest thing to a professional trick in this whole post.

One more thing while we're here, because your studio is now a window, and a window has opening hours. When the light is good, photograph everything. Batch the whole shoot, every product, every angle, all in one session, because 10 products photographed in 1 good hour will beat 10 separate attempts spread across 10 different days of British weather.

I should say that the setup I settled on in the end was faintly ridiculous. A sheet of printed card that was made to look like a whitewashed wooden board, propped up by the window on a cloudy day, shot on my phone and edited on my phone because that was quicker. I was doing most of it with a baby on me at the time, so quick mattered more than clever. And here is the bit that surprised me: once the business could afford a proper lighting setup and a real backdrop, I still went back to the window, because it was faster and the pictures were just as good.

How do I make handmade products look good with just a phone?

The phone is fine. It's better than the cameras plenty of professional product shots were taken on 10 years ago, so the difference between your photos and the ones you admire is habits, and they're all learnable.

Put the product down in the light and turn the object rather than moving the camera. The light stays where you set it and the product does the work of showing its angles. Then stand slightly further back than feels natural and zoom in a little, because a phone lens right up close distorts shape, bowing straight edges and making whatever is nearest the lens look enormous, and stepping back flatters the shape of almost everything.

Keep the background plain, a sheet or a big piece of card is plenty, so the eye has nowhere to go except the product. Then show the scale, because 20cm means absolutely nothing to most people. A purse photographed next to a hand, a mug next to a book, a quilt on an actual bed, and suddenly she knows exactly what arrives in the parcel.

And photograph the texture up close, properly close, because texture is the entire argument for handmade, the evidence that a machine didn't make it. Add at least one photo of the thing in use in a real room, the cushion on a sofa rather than floating on white, because she isn't buying a floating cushion, she's buying her sofa looking better.

The last habit is the one I'd fight for: keep the colour honest. Every editing app will offer to make your colours richer than the truth, and the day someone opens the parcel expecting plum and finds brown, the return costs you postage both ways, the sale, and a customer who'd have been lovely if the photo had just told her the truth.

Which photo matters most in my listing?

The first one, by a distance, and it has a completely different job to all the others. The first photo is a thumbnail, competing in a grid of near-identical thumbnails at roughly the size of a postage stamp, so it has to survive being small. One product filling the frame, plain background, strong light, and if a photo only works once you see it big, it isn't a first photo. That thumbnail is also doing a search job alongside your titles and tags, which I've covered in why am I getting no views on Etsy, so I won't repeat it here.

Every other photo exists to answer a question. How big is it, what does the back look like, what's the fastening, will it go with her kitchen. Nobody messages a stranger to ask, they just leave, so go through your own listing pretending you know nothing about the product, and every question without a photo answering it is your shot list for the next good-light day. If you're getting clicks but no orders, unanswered questions are one of the most common reasons, and I've written about the rest of that gap in Etsy views but no sales.

Why do some shops get away with much worse photos than mine?

Because photographs are how a stranger decides, and not everyone is selling to strangers.

Someone who has watched you make the thing, who saw the fabric arrive and the first version go wrong and the finished one come good, needs far less convincing by the time it's for sale. That's why makers with an audience get away with photos that would sink a cold listing. The photo isn't carrying the whole weight of the decision anymore, the relationship is carrying most of it, and the photography only has to do everything when the buyer knows nothing about you.

So sort the window and the white card this week, your listings will genuinely be better for it. The longer game is making sure fewer of the people who see your work are complete strangers, and that side, how you gather those people and what you send them, is more than one post about photography can hold. I've put the starting point into a free email course called 7 Days to Shift Your Shop, one short email a day for a week, if you want it.

A better photo convinces a stranger. You could also just have fewer strangers