How High Quality Product Photography Can Strengthen Your Sunglass Brand

 
A hero shot showing off these sunglasses, perfect for use on social media to engage your potential customers

A hero shot showing off these sunglasses, perfect for use on social media to engage your potential customers

 

Brand Strength Brings in and Keeps Customers

Reading through this article from The Hartford Business Owners Playbook, you can begin to see the value that brand strength can have for your company. Building brand equity opens the door to customer loyalty and helps educate your customers on the value your brand has over other companies out there. One thing to note as you begin to build your own playbook is how much of this can be achieved by quality content. 

Your Product Photography is Part of Your Brand

I have said it in other articles, and it’s worth saying again here. Product Photography is a part of your brand. It’s as much a part of your brand as your name, logo, advertising content, marketing content, and web design. In order to build brand equity, your customers need to experience consistency when it comes to your content, including product photos. Does it make sense to have compelling Instagram images that links back to low-quality product photography back on your website? By the time they click through to a product page, you have almost earned a customer, that’s the time to keep up the experience and show off your products in the best possible way. Continue reading below for some thoughts on why you may want to outsource product photography for your brand.

Sunglasses are Tricky to Photograph Well

They can deceptively complex to photograph. They might seem like they would be simple to shoot since they don’t require the styling finesse of soft goods and apparel or have the complex metal surfaces that need to be managed in jewelry photography. The challenge with sunglasses mostly lies in the lenses. Lenses are generally quite reflective, even when they may not look like it in person. Simple dark tinted lenses can reflect a lot back to the camera, and that issue is multiplied when you start working with mirrored lenses. On top of that, you also have to deal with being able to see things behind the lens. It’s sort of the worst-case scenario of having a reflective AND translucent surface, it leaves few options for managing reflections. 

Most Sunglasses Will Require Post Processing

Post-processing, or retouching, is necessary for sunglass photography most of the time. The main thing to look out for is lens color. Does the color of the lenses in the image match how they look in person? It is very common to lose some of the saturation or color nuance when photographing sunglasses, and post-processing can bring those details back. You want your customers to have as accurate of color as possible when shopping on your site. Additional, as with many small accessories, dust will be an issue. You can use an air compressor or canned air, but dust still finds it’s way onto set, and those tiny dust particles often catch the light and become very distracting. Whether you are shooting the sunglasses yourself, or hiring a photographer, I do not recommend trying to save money on retouching, it’s part of investing in the best possible product photos. 

Investing In Showing Off Your Product

Speaking of investing in product photos: As I’ve written in other articles, consider approaching product photography with an investment mindset. If you are solely an eCommerce website, your product photos are all you have and you can fairly easily track the ROI of product photography because it has such a direct impact on sales. Clients sometimes come to me almost begrudging that they need product photos, or express that they have no or little budget to get them done. I will pose this question: What good is all the investment in production, website development, or marketing if your customers can’t see your product?


Do you need more help with your product photography or strategy?

I’m always adding articles that I hope will help you understand how to think about and implement product photography for your eCommerce business. You can read them here:

If you are interested in my services as a product photographer or consultant, contact me here:



BTS Tuesday - Puma Men's Shoes

Sometimes you have to get creative when trying to be creative. That is to say, you have to look to the unlikely sometimes to find the right prop or surface or background for your image. 

Such was the case when shooting this image for Puma. 

The background for this shot is the concrete floor in the studio, and the platform for these shoes were our wardrobe racks. The colors worked and we had three available to make this sort of industrial looking runner. 

Wardrobe racks providing the platform for these shoes

Product stylist Ashley puts the finishing touch on this set up

The lighting set up for this shot ended up being a single light. Initially I felt like this would be a two light set up, with a small softbox aimed at the floor to the rear of the subject to keep the light from falling off and looking like an abyss, but that ended up being way too hard to manage. All we needed back there were a few reflecting boards to bounce light from my beauty dish back into the scene. Voila! A really nice one light shot. 

Losing My Reflection - Shooting Sunglasses for Minimal Post Processing

Carefully setting up your set can save you a lot of time and trouble in post when shooting and editing sunglasses. 

Shooting sunglasses can be tricky. You want to see a good representation of the shape and style, but most lenses on sunglasses are curved and have a tendency to reflect everything in front of them. Editing out reflections in lenses may seem pretty straight forward, but the subtle gradient of many lenses can make it tougher than you might think. This set up will give you virtually no reflections and a great looking shot of your sunglasses, right in camera. 

Behold, the boat

Note the light placement. I used a beauty dish here for ease of set transition, but two softboxes would work well. You are essentially bouncing light back onto the glasses from the front and back sweep. If you are getting milky looking frames, add a flag to keep some of the softbox rom spilling directly onto the glasses. 

This is the set up used by the company I shoot for full time. One of the benefits of working in a production studio is that you get to work with other photographers and share ideas on how to tackle certain issues. The sunglass boat is one such instance. 

The idea here is to build yourself a "boat" out of white seamless paper, with only one hole big enough to fit the lens. This way, everything around your sunglasses is white and will reflect as seamless white in your lenses. 

Carefully cut a hole in the paper to allow just the lens through. This will keep your reflections to a minimum. 

This set up will eliminate reflections for quite a few styles of sunglasses. Aviators and similar styles may reflect the lens itself, but that is far more manageable in post than most other reflections. 

 

Note the use of white gaffer tape to tape the seams. This prevents the small paper overlaps from reflecting in the lens

This set up has the added versatility of being able to shoot straight on and at an angle, or back shot in one set with out needing to move fill cards or fancy footwork. 


The Smoking Gun - Neon Noir Still Life Tribute

Another evening at home with nothing but ideas, this still life was shot as a tribute to the "neon noir" crime thrillers of the 1980's

Tech Details

Set: In studio, black sheet as backdrop

Lights: Canon 580exII from top left with red gel, LumoPro LP160 with blue gel from below, both gridded with Rogue speedlight grids

Other Notes: I used matches which create lots of smoke when extinguished to get the smoke effect. This image is straight out of camera, no post processing whatsoever. 

Guitar - Still Life Product Photography

Sometimes models are hard to come by and you get the itch to make something happen. I had one such evening, so I grabbed my guitar and decided to work on a little still life/product photography. Something a little more artsy than catalog. 

Tech Details

Set: In studio, black sheet for the backdrop

Lights: Canon 580exII in a small softbox camera left, gold reflector camera right, LumoPro LP160 camera right with flag covering the neck.