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Jeff Delacruz, founder of Products on White Photography, on the Honest Ecommerce podcast
Feb 8, 20215 min read

Product Photography Strategy for Ecommerce: Products on White

Your Main Listing Image Has the Highest ROI of Any Photo You Will Ever Take

A single professional white-background photo starts at $39.99 at Products on White Photography. That one image sits on your Google Shopping listing, your product page, and every comparison surface where a potential buyer is deciding whether to click. Every impression that image earns is a micro-conversion decision. If the photo is bad, the answer is no before the customer ever reads a word of your copy.

Jeff Delacruz has been a photographer for 19 years and has spent the last nine building Products on White Photography (POW) into a catalog studio that has delivered over 500,000 product photos across 15,000 orders. His core argument is simple: the photo is the only thing your customer can evaluate before buying. They cannot pick it up, smell it, or feel it. The image is the product, at that moment.

What a Complete Ecommerce Product Image Set Actually Looks Like

Most sellers default to a front, back, and inside shot and call it done. That approach leaves conversion on the table. A complete listing image set breaks into two distinct jobs.

The first is the main listing image. This should be a clean white background, tightly lit, showing exactly what the customer will receive. No props, no distractions. Shoppers arriving at a product page are already past the inspiration phase. They want to know what comes in the package.

The secondary images do the selling. These slots are where you communicate features and benefits through infographics that call out specific ingredients or specs, show the product in use through lifestyle or scale context, and demonstrate texture or finish with close-up detail shots. If budget allows, a 360-degree spin or a short product video rounds out the set. The mental shift is from showing to selling.

When to Stop DIYing Your Product Photography

Delacruz is direct about this: if you have not generated any revenue yet, do not hire a photographer. Get to market first. The window light method, meaning placing your product near a large north-facing window and shooting with a phone or point-and-shoot, produces acceptable results at zero cost. The goal at that stage is proving demand, not perfecting assets.

The moment money starts coming in, the first investment should be a professional main listing image. One photo at roughly $40 will return dividends on every impression it receives from that point forward. Secondary images can follow as revenue grows.

To actually shoot products at a professional level requires at minimum $10,000 in equipment, and buying that equipment does not confer the knowledge to use it. POW photographers hold college degrees from photography schools. Shooting reflective surfaces like glass or metallics is genuinely difficult. The way light refracts through transparent materials or reflects off polished surfaces requires specific techniques that are not learnable from a few YouTube videos, regardless of how expensive the camera is.

The Real Cost of Lifestyle Photography (and a Cheaper Alternative)

The advice to get lifestyle photography gets repeated constantly without anyone explaining what it actually costs to produce it properly. A single lifestyle shoot involving models, a styled location, props, hair and makeup, and a creative director runs a minimum of $2,000 and can reach $10,000 or more depending on complexity. For most ecommerce sellers, especially those selling on Amazon or running a sub-seven-figure store, that spend does not make financial sense.

POW built a service called lifestyle composites to address this gap. The process works like this: the seller finds a stock photo of an appropriate scene, sends the product to POW, and the team analyzes the lighting direction and quality of the stock image, photographs the product under matching light conditions, and composites the product into the scene in Photoshop. The all-in price, including photography, retouching, and the stock image, is $150. The results are realistic enough that without being told to look for the composite work, most viewers will not spot it.

This service is well suited for website banner images and secondary listing images. It is not cost-effective for Instagram, where posting frequency demands too much content volume for $150 per image to make sense. For social, user-generated content from real customers or product-for-photo exchanges with micro-influencers is a better fit and can also work well in email newsletters and as supporting images on product pages.

How the Products on White Photography Process Works

The workflow is designed to eliminate the friction that makes working with freelance photographers expensive and slow. Traditional day-rate photography starts at $1,500 to $2,000 before a single image is delivered. POW operates through an online ordering system with a shot list template that lets sellers specify exactly what they want, reference inspiration images from a Pinterest board or Instagram collection, and set lighting direction.

Once the order is placed, the seller ships the product to POW. The team shoots within seven business days. Revisions are available before final delivery. Orders over $75 qualify for free return shipping. The product comes back at the end of the order.

One technical differentiator worth noting is multi-capture compositing. Rather than accepting an unflattering reflection on a product surface, POW shoots multiple exposures of the same setup, using flags or dark panels to eliminate specific reflections, then composites those exposures in Photoshop to produce a single clean image. Larger catalog studios shooting 70 to 100 products per day on fixed lighting rigs do not do this. Every POW shot is custom-lit, which matters when working with reflective, transparent, or unusually shaped products. The broader question of how to build a complete visual story for a product page beyond white backgrounds is explored in a separate conversation with The Line Studios.

Key Lessons From This Episode

  • The main listing image on white is your highest-ROI photo asset. Upgrade it first, before investing in anything else.
  • A complete image set goes beyond front-back-inside. Use secondary images to show scale, call out features through infographics, and demonstrate the product in context.
  • Do not hire a photographer before you have revenue. The window light method gets you to market at no cost, and that is the right priority at launch.
  • Professional lifestyle photography costs $2,000 at a minimum. Lifestyle composites at $150 per image are a practical alternative for most ecommerce brands.
  • Expensive cameras do not replace lighting knowledge. Reflective and transparent products in particular require professional setup and technique that cannot be replicated with consumer gear.
  • User-generated content from customers or micro-influencers is the right tool for Instagram and email, not expensive composite or lifestyle images.

Hear the full conversation with Jeff Delacruz, including more detail on shot list strategy, the DIY window light method, and the free Shopify Compass course on product photography, in the transcript below.

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Transcript

Photo is the only thing that your customers are going to see online before they buy. This is your chance to show what your product is.

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, where we're dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. 

I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running an online business does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

If you're struggling with scaling your sales, Electric Eye is here to help. To apply to work with us visit electriceye.io/connect to learn more. Now let's get on with the show.

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Hey everybody welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. Today we're welcoming to the show yet another photography expert seems to be a theme lately. 

And you know how I always harp about how creative is the cornerstone of a successful business? Jeff Delacruz, from Prints on White. I said that wrong. Sorry. Products on White Photography. How are you doing today? 

I'm doing really great. How are you doing, Chase?

Just making mistakes in the intro, but... 

(laughs)

It's a minute in at this point. Let's just let it roll.

Alright. Let's do it. (laughs)

It lets people know that I'm human. And I make mistakes. And sometimes I drink too much coffee and it makes me jittery.

2020 man. That's the theme.

Yeah. You gotta stay awake for work somehow. 

Right.

Awesome. So we're talking about Products on White Photography. It's the business that you founded. You've been a photographer for 19 years now?

Yeah, yeah. Came up through the ranks as a freelance photographer. About 9 years ago, I started Products on White photography, also known as POW for short. 

And yeah, we photograph products on white backgrounds for Ecommerce businesses and Amazon. And we have been around for 9 years now.

How did that concept come about? Were you just getting hit up all the time to do the same thing over and over? Or did you see a need in the market?

Yes. So about 9 years ago, we were just getting calls from Amazon sellers, mostly Amazon sellers just looking to get 1 or 2 products photographed. So back then, there wasn't like a really easy solution to get that done. 

Just to give you an idea, when you hire a freelance photographer, you usually hire them for a day rate. And then there's this whole production behind it.

A pre-production period usually starts at around $1500 to $2,000 a day. And if you just needed one white background photo, it was just a ludicrous deal. So we were like, there's just got to be a way to do this easier. 

And if you need one photo, there is no place for you to go. So that's why we created this concept. We created an online ordering system where you can place your orders online. 

We created a system where you can provide shot direction pretty easily. And then just streamline the process with software where we update you along the way and send you your stuff.

Yeah. Sounds like you're building a pretty efficient system over there. What's funny is my business partner at the agency, I actually used to shoot products for his old Ecommerce business. 

Oh, yeah. (laughs)

And now it's just like one of the ways that we got to know each other a bit better. So it's just funny. It comes full circle. I'll tell you what, shooting products on white is an acquired skill. It took me a while to figure it out. You need a lot of good lighting for sure. So that's... 

Mm-hmm.

That's probably a good transition. We'll talk about kind of the gear about doing it yourself or hiring someone else in a minute. But I guess, shooting products on a white background that's just like the default image everybody wants in a store. 

I believe there's even been, not audits, but studies done that show that is the number one type of photography that you need for your business. That's going to move the needle on a conversion rates factor versus anything else. 

Do you have any of those facts? Have you learned anything along the way that kind of touts the importance of this?

Yeah. I think it's pretty common sense. If you go to a website and you see all these distractions... When you're looking at the product page, you might be wondering, "Am I gonna get all these other props that are in the shot?" 

And I think when people go to the product page, they're ready to buy. They're interested in what the actual product is. 

So maybe their experience was when they entered your website, they got influenced by the branding images, the lifestyle images.

They're like "Yeah, this feels right to me. Now, I just need some cream or something like that. I need this lotion. Now I want to see what comes in that lotion package. I want to see what the ingredients are. I want to know what kind of benefits and what I'm getting with this thing. I don't want to be inundated with more branding." 

And I think that can be distracting. 

Yeah. 

As far as stats go, there was an eBay study that came out maybe about 7 or 8 years ago that talked about that. 

And it was more focused on the difference between DIY product photography, where you're just setting up on your desk and taking a photo versus a professional white background photo. And the white background photo converts more. Just the idea.

Yeah, I think it almost lends itself to just the professionalism and the value behind it and the quality of it. If they can make the investment in a high-end image, the value must be there. 

And I think that is... There's definitely a correlation. We talked about it in a previous episode of there's a correlation between high-quality imagery and perceived value.

Yeah, that's very astute. I always say the photo is the only thing that your customers are going to see online before they buy. They're not going to the store, they're not picking it up and not looking at it. 

They can't smell it, taste it, feel it. This is your chance to show them what your product is. So why do you want to go cheap at this really important moment and just set it on your desk and take a cell phone shot?

And the thing is, if you're selling this product over and over and over again, every time you get an impression on that image, your customers or potential customers are making that crucial decision whether or not to add that to cart. 

And if those photos are bad, I don't know if I would push the button.

Yeah. That makes total sense. 

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So let's talk about what makes a good Ecommerce product listing. Let's roll with this idea of this hypothetical lotion that someone wants to buy. 

If someone asked your opinion, what would the image set look like for a product like that?

Yeah. I think there's a lot of common misconceptions, or maybe people just aren't thinking about it, like I do every day. 

But I mean, we really want to divide our listing up into 2 sections. One is this main listing image. And this main listing image is the image that's going to be on your Google Shopping. It's going to be... When compared to other products, this will be the one that's shown. 

And you really want that to be just on a white background, which you're gonna buy. You want it to look nice, you want it to look crisp, and you want to show your customers what they're going to get. But then we're talking about secondary listing images after that. 

So once they click into the product with these other bottom listings... And on a Shopify template, usually those are below the other images. And what I see people typically do is they'll just do like a front-back-inside and call it good. 

But I really think that customers want to go beyond that front-back-inside. They really want to see images that tell them more about what they're getting that sell them the product. 

So these images are your opportunity to do... Focus on features and benefits of the product. Instead of just showing the back, talk about the ingredients using infographics that call out these different parts of this lotion, for example. 

Maybe put a smear on the surface and show how shear it is and show how soft it is. Maybe you also want to do some lifestyle images that show who this product is meant for. And show it in action being used and trying to add a little bit of context to that product. 

And then finally, if you have the budget, maybe do a little product video, or do a 360 (degree image) on the product to show a spinning around just to add a little bit more information about what they're getting. So the difference is selling versus showing.

Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. I think that just having that... It's not really a hero shot. But it's like that main image on white and then front-back-inside is definitely a lazy way to do it. There's no context for scale even. (laughs) 

Mm-hmm.

If a picture's on a white background, you can't tell if that thing's 2 inches tall or 20 (inches). You really need to put it into context with an actual environment or a human being or where it's going to be used. 

You can tell a story with images and you can tell the features and benefits if you think about it long enough with a still image and that's going to help you with the sales. 

So what you guys offer there and what we spoke about here is the main hero image, it's being on white. Does it necessarily need to be on white or are people finding success on a more branded color?

Yeah. There's an opportunity to get creative with our company. The way we work is you just provide shot direction and then we match it. 

So if you want to do more creative stuff... Maybe it's a group shot with a product overhead with different props around it, we can do something like that. You just gotta set it up, take a... Stick a cell phone shot of the arrangement you're looking for... 

Because how would we know unless you did something like that. And then send us your stuff and send us the props and then we'll set it up. We will light it and retouch it to make it look perfect. 

In the example you gave, Chase, where you're talking about background color... The way we shoot these products on a white background, we can easily clip out the background and change the color of the background to just about any color pretty easily. We have a lot of tutorials on how to do this or we could do it for you.

 We just got to know. The hard part is really just allowing your imagination to roam and "How can I create my images so that they're interesting, and they enhance my brand. And they tell the story of what I'm trying to do?"

Yeah. It's not only that. But now that you're talking about capturing these images in a way that allows you to manipulate the backgrounds of it. That's just... To me, I have a photography background to be a nerd. 

But essentially, if you can light these things appropriately, and you can get the level of detail that a professional can get, you can clip it out, and you can essentially superimpose it wherever you want which essentially means you're making the investment a once in a quality photo that you can possibly reuse in a few different ways, granted if the lighting is matching the direction of what you're trying to do. 

But if you're just looking to take your product on a white or a transparent background of that point image and push it to a different color background for a certain sales campaign…

For example, right now we're recording this in the middle of October, so Halloween is coming up. So if this thing was originally shot in white, and you want to drop it in on an orange background to be festive and spooky... 

Mm-hmm.

...that'd be pretty straightforward if you had these assets provided to you by someone that knows what they're doing. Doing that with an iPhone picture and hard light from the sun or even a big bay window, I don't think that's going to cut it. 

You're going to really need to have some all-around lighting and understanding how glare works. So that's when it gets a little more than DIY and into the more professional thing. So let's chat about that. 

Mm-hmm.

When should I?.. Where should I be in my business-- either in sales or overall growth or just size... However you want to really put this out there--- when I should start thinking about making a shift from doing like a DIY approach to moving in to partnering with professionals to help me with my product shots.

Yeah. That's a really great question. Because I do think as a photographer, there's a point where... Maybe you're not ready to hire a photographer because you just don't... You're not making enough money yet. You're a newly launched business. You're not making any money. [You're] at your pre-money  [stage]. 

Spending money on a photographer is just not the thing you need to be focusing on yet. Because you can get decent photos by doing it yourself using what I would like to call the "window light method". 

But there's other ways to do it. And you can pretty much do that for free and it looks okay. And I think the idea is you want to get to market. You want to get to market as soon as possible and see how it goes. And then the second you start having some money coming in, [you're like] "Okay now, let's hire a photographer and do the main listing image." 

Because the main listing image is your highest ROI photo. And you can worry about the secondary images later. 

Our business photos start at $39.99 per photo and go down with volume. So for $40 bucks, you can upgrade your main listing image on your product, and then that photo will return dividends over time. 

And you could just do one. And then worry about the secondary listing images as you start to increase revenue. 

And so I really think that as a digital marketer, you really want to think of photography more as a way to increase conversion rates and click through rates in a way that's really effective.

Absolutely. 

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So let's say that I'm to that point and I'm like "Alright, I think I should get this shot professionally. And I can come up with $40." How does it work? Do I drop it in a package and I mail it off to you? 

Dropship it from my store or however my fulfillment is set up? [Do] I send you the product and then you send it back and then I get an awesome image? How does it work?

Yeah. First step is to visit the How It Works page and watch the 2 videos there. We've really got this dialed in. We've just had our 15,000th order, delivered probably over 500,000 different product photos over the life of this business. And this process works.

And basically what you do is you start by building a shot list with the shots that you want? Because if you just send us stuff, and you're like "Shoot it.", You don't know what you're gonna get. We don't know what to shoot for you. It could be anything. 

So you start by just figuring out the shots that you want by building a shot list. I think this is true with any photographer, right?

Yeah. It's true with almost anything creative. It's like, "What do you want, first of all?" Let's talk about the strategy first and then we can get into the implementation of it.

Right. And when working with us. We have a shot list template, basically. And the first row is photo one. "Okay, what do I want in the photo?" 

"I don't know. You tell us." 

We want a product straight on? Or do we want a product with the cap off on its side with like a whip coming out? Or we want the product overhead with some powder coming off the side? The options are endless. 

And I think it really starts even before that point. Just going online and just seeing what's out there. Like building a Pinterest mood board of just all the photos that you want your photos to look like or just a folder or just screenshotting things or just Instagram folders, collections and stuff. Just things that you love that you're like, "Man, I really wish that my photos could look this good, right?" 

And then you can reference that in your shot list. And you can say, "Make it look like this or make it... Light it like this." Because we actually have the ability to light things at a custom level as well as... Because we're not just putting this in a light and taking a shot. 

Our sets are really sophisticated. We can actually look at a photo and say," Oh, this was lit with two highlights on the side." How do we set that up? What's the light set... "So there's 2 highlights there just like you requested." 

And then we continue, with the "How It Works." So you know what you want, you put together your shortlist, we make it as easy as just placing the order online. 

But we have a team of customer service people that you can send your stuff to, and we'll work with you to figure that out, then you send us your stuff, and we shoot it within seven business days or less turned around. 

If you have some revisions, we can make some changes. But if you're happy, then you just download them and upload them to your website.

And it's as easy as that. Are you sending the products back? Or how does that work?

So if you spend over $75, you get free return shipping. Since we don't know what you're shipping us, we can't offer free shipping to us, because you can send us an Advil and we don't want to pay for that. 

But most of the time, most people qualify for free return shipping and just send it back at the end of the order, basically.

Absolutely. So it's not even... You're not even losing out on the cost of the product, you're just getting some awesome assets. 

And honestly, at the end of the day, it's one of those things. It's like time or money. They got a proven process, you can hire someone and just get it done. It's out of sight out of mind. Jeff and his team will knock it out for you. 

Or you can be in the weeds of your company coming up with this process yourself or investing in a studio or studio equipment that you have to set up and tear down. Aw man. 

Going back to me talking about when I was over Homage helping Shawn take product shots, I'd have to lug over 3 giant lights and set up all my PocketWizardsand sync that stuff... 

(laughs)

And then I'd realize I left my flash card in my car or something. It was just a  whole thing. It took us like an hour or two just to get set up, then I'd have to like remember how we lit the last shots. 

And it was just... It's definitely a painstaking process to do it yourself. And I think there's value in hiring someone like Jeff and his team to just get that stuff done within 7 days is also insanely the turnaround time.

Yeah, the equipment we have, you would have to spend at least $10,000 just to get set up. And then it's gonna take more than just watching a couple YouTube videos in order to figure out how to use the equipment. 

Oh yeah. 

All our photographers have college degrees from photography schools. They're very technically focused. And yeah, they're really good. They're really good at what they do.

Yeah. That's something that people don't realize is you can go out and buy a $5,000 camera and I guarantee your pictures will look like crap compared to something I shoot on my iPhone. 

Because I understand composition and I understand how lighting works and I understand how to utilize the tool in my hand. Because I studied the art of photography, not like an iPhone. I went to school for it too. 

And I guarantee that everyone on your team is the same as well. Shooting glass is the most difficult thing in the world. 

So if anyone out there has glass products, I'm sure that you are just hating life whenever it comes to trying to get a decent product shot with something transparent  like a pint glass. It's almost impossible. 

Mm-hmm.

Unless you know what you're doing. 

(laughs) You know what's really funny though is I talk to a lot of customers before they place their orders. And they're always... Sometimes there's always this workflow where people... They start off…

They try shooting themselves and it just doesn't look great. And especially with glass products you're saying. This is why I'm bringing this up. 

And then they're like, "I tried to shoot it. I got this light tent... I got this thing on Amazon and I shot it and it just doesn't look that great. I just can't figure it out. And that's why I'm calling you." And they just sound so defeated and sheepish that they have to call.

Look. What it is... It's the metallic or glass, anything that's shiny that's going to reflect or refract the light is just a nightmare unless you know how to deal with it.

And I think it's also just like everything in the world is telling us that we should be able to take our new iPhone and photograph an ad campaign with it.

Well, that's what Apple's trying to sell you is this insane (laughs)... This insane thing. But they also aren't talking about, it might have been shot on an iPhone, but it was not lit by an iPhone. That's not natural light. 

Right. It's got this whole rig around it too, or something like that, that's really complicated. (laughs)

To take away behind the veil or the curtain or whatever it is... Photography comes down to lighting. It's all about the lighting. The camera is one thing but it's actually the glass on the camera, the lens, directly affects how the light works in the center of the camera as well. 

So the lens has just as much to do with the lighting as the actual lights do. So understanding how the aperture works on a lens and understanding how to light a product, especially a tricky product --transparent or metal, anything like that-- that is a skill that you got to pick up. 

And it's something that you'll have a hard time doing with some YouTube videos and an iPhone.

In case you might, you might kind of get a kick out of this. We're doing some things that are a little bit more advanced than other catalog studios are doing too. We're doing what's called multi capture compositing. 

So we'll set the product down on the set and light the product and then we'll have like this really ugly reflection on top. So we'll take another shot without moving anything. But we'll put like a flag or something dark on top to get rid of that ugly reflection. 

And then we'll take those two images, export them into Photoshop and combine them together and paint in the section that we want and eliminate the other section. So each image could be like more than 1 or 2 images, --maybe up to 5 images-- of different multi capture composites to create one image. So  I think that's like an advanced level. That's something that we're doing.... 

Yeah.

...I don't know any other catalog studio that's doing that. And it keeps our shot counts really low. So I would say like bigger catalog studios are shooting like 70 to 100 shots a day, because they're just using the same lighting a lot. 

And they're just flopping and dropping and getting through it. And that's fine, I guess if you're working with one company. 

But since we're working with 100 companies a day, all with different lighting specs, you have to be able to move in and out of these different lighting scenarios really quickly. So every shot is custom. 

Yeah. 

That's what I'm coming down to.

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I got into this in music and in photography. That's where my world started. And I did some album covers... Not album (covers). Sorry. Magazine covers for some music magazines. And I did a composite cover of this band. 

And they were all shot in a studio, same lighting on every character. And I put them into a band formation because it was easier to do that because I was also manipulating the background and the foreground, making this like a cool thing I had in my head. 

Now what was funny was within 3 months, they had kicked a member out of the band and just decided to move on without him and I just redid the photo for him. (laughs)

You just pressed Delete on that layer and that dude's gone. 

I had to move people around and then we're like, "Hey, that's sweet." (laughs)

(laughs) That's great.

So is there anything I forgot to ask you that you think would be worthwhile sharing with our audience?

Yeah, I really think that one of the big questions... I get a lot of questions that are regular questions. 

And one of them is about lifestyle photography. And I really feel like there's just kind of this thing where everybody is telling you to get lifestyle photography for your website for your listing.

I'm guilty of that. I do it all the time. 

But people aren't saying how to get it. And that just... As the photographer that people come to and say, "I want lifestyle photography", I'm here to tell you that getting lifestyle photography, true professional lifestyle photography is expensive. 

And almost not worth it most of the time unless you're a really big brand. So let me dissect what that means here. And I know this because I was a freelance photographer in that world for many, many years before I started this business. 

So let's just say we're doing a letter board. And on that letter board, we want to put it on like a wedding table... Like a wedding gift table to say like, "Congratulations, Joe and Jackie!" Or something. Right? 

Mm-hmm.

And that will be that'll be the lifestyle photo and the product is the letterboard. So this is actually a really complex lifestyle shoot. 

Because if you imagine, first of all, there's like a table, and there's all this wedding stuff on the table. Presents and stuff. And maybe like there's cake on the table. And maybe there's just all this stuff. Somebody's got to buy all that stuff, right? 

Mm-hmm. 

And then this has to be in some sort of scene. So we can't just bust into somebody's wedding, put the reader board down and take a photo of this. We have to like set a scene. 

So we might need to rent a place, for example, that looks like it could be the place for the wedding. And then if we have the models in the shot, which is like Joe and Jackie themselves, we wouldn't need to hire models. 

And the models need to wear a special set of clothing. So... 

And then you need makeup artists, and then you need people to help...

Hair and makeup.

...help with setting up the scene and all the lighting set on me. I used to work at a commercial portrait studio. And anytime we're doing location work, it was a nightmare.

Right? And that's what is not being put out there. When somebody's saying just go get some lifestyle photos, they're not telling you the rest of the story. And so to put a shoot like that together, it's just really expensive.

It's definitely a couple $1000 bucks to go that route. 

Yeah. 

At the minimum.

At least $2,000 on the cheap realm. Upwards of five to $10,000, depending on where you're getting these models. Are they professional models? Are they industry stylists and stuff? How elaborate is this set? 

If you just want a photo for your Amazon listing, anything over a couple $100 is just too expensive because it's just not reasonable. So I do think there's a place for lifestyle stuff, though. We created a service called lifestyle composites. 

And basically, what you do is you just take a stock photo, make sure that it is like a place where we can put a product into it, and then you provide the product and you send it over to us. 

We look at it and we say, "Okay, we can do this. We can put this product in this scene." And what we're going to do is we're going to look at how that stock photo was lit, and then light the product so that it has that same style of lighting, and then Photoshop it into that scene so that it looks realistic. 

And we're doing that for $150, all-in, including the retouching, the photography, and the stock photo. And this is a new service and our customers love it. So I just wanted to bring that up, because it's a solution to something that I think a lot of people are struggling with.

Yeah. I definitely took a look at that service earlier today when we were getting ready for the podcast.

And unless you told me, it was the majority of them. I could spot a few things, I'll be honest, but it was because I was looking for it. In passing, I'm probably not going to notice that those are composites. 

Some of them were pretty, pretty miraculous what you guys did. I was very impressed. But no. I agree that there are cheaper alternatives. 

Especially  when you're working on product-market fit, getting a lifestyle photography with like a model and the whole scene... Screw that. 

Use an alternative like you guys have. Another thing I've seen some people do is just reach out to influencers be like, "I'll give you a free product, if you give me some sweet photos." You probably have a zero say in the direction of it. You get what you get. 

But that's another cheaper alternative, as opposed to hiring a creative director to flesh out an entire shoot for you. I think there is a time and place for that stuff. And it's probably not anywhere in the first million dollars of sales of your business that you're ever gonna need to do that. 

When you're in that scaling stage though, assets like that do have a time and a place and they can definitely be really worthwhile if you're doing some bigger advertising and marketing campaigns with that stuff.

Mm-hmm.Yeah. I think they're like a great solution for banner images on your website. I don't think they're, they're great for Instagram feed images. I think I think you just need too much content for Instagram in order to get that many made. 

Because you need to be posting like once or twice a day almost in order to get real, real results from your Instagram stuff. And if you're spending $150 bucks per photo, that doesn't really make any sense.

Yeah. That's not a good return on your investment.

Yeah. And I think more like utilizing this window stuff or behind the scenes or just DIY stuff is really good for that kind of stuff.

For Instagram, user generated content is so awesome. You just ask people for pictures of them using your products and they might not even be professional at all, but it tells the story, too. And that stuff is fantastic for Instagram. 

It's a perfect place for it. It's fantastic for your email newsletter as well. And some of that stuff makes... There's a good argument to have some of that stuff on your product page as well to show "Hey, this is a real thing. It's really selling. It's really helping these people do X, Y and, Z."

Mm-hmm. Yeah, maybe it's like a secondary image or something like that, just showing it's actual use maybe with like a little quote at the bottom from that influence, that you'd sent the product to just talking about why they like it. I think that's... 

We work with a lot of beauty products and I see that a lot just working with influencers and stuff in that way.

So for someone that's a little bit more DIY, though, you did something cool with Shopify. Do you want to pitch that real fast? It's not really pitching it I guess. It's free.

Yeah. I mean (laughs) No. This was a great experience for us. For me, they flew me out to Toronto, and we did like a whole one and a half hour course on using window light to photograph your own stuff. We talked a little bit about what we were talking about here about the value of photography. 

But really most of the course is a down and dirty video on how to take your own product photos with like a point and shoot camera or a cellphone. It talks about using window light. It talks about all the nuances of that. 

It talks about photographing people. (Like if) you have like a t-shirt company, you want to photograph a friend wearing a t-shirt. This is how you do it. It talks about retouching, how to get stuff retouched and cleaned up. 

It's by far the most intense, and in-depth course out there on DIY product photography that... I haven't seen anything like it out there. So check it out. It's free on Shopify Compass.

Yeah. We'll make sure to link to it in the show notes for everybody. And there's also another amazing offer. 

Jeff and his team over there at Products On White Photography, are offering up a free test photo for any listener, if you guys actually want to want a trial of what they're after. Do you have anything else to add to that I guess I stole your outro. 

(laughs) No. I mean, we want to show you that we're worth it. We want to do a free photo for you. And you just compare the difference yourself. 

Switch that main listing image out, see how it looks on your site, see if it affects conversion rates. You can do it basically for free. And yeah. Try us out. And I think we'll prove that we're the best. So

Yeah. The caveat there is you have to pay for shipping both ways, or you lose the product, but you're gonna get a photo out of it. 

Yeah. 

Awesome. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'll make sure to link to Products on White Photography in the show notes, same with the Shopify course. 

Thank you so much.

Alright. Thanks a lot, Chase. It was a real pleasure talking with you.

I cannot thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their journey and knowledge with us today. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add to our businesses. Links and more information will be available in the show notes as well. 

If anything in this podcast resonated with you and your business, feel free to reach out and learn more at electriceye.io/connect. Also, make sure you subscribe and leave an amazing review. Thank you!