Product Photography in Sangamwadi, Pune

Reshoots are the real cost

The expensive part of product photography is doing it twice.

And the usual reason for doing it twice is that the first set was styled to whatever was fashionable and now looks out of step with everything else.

Heavily styled product photography dates quickly. Props, backgrounds and colour treatments all move, and a catalogue built on them has a short life.

A plain, well-lit product on a clean background does not date at all, because there is nothing in it to go out of fashion.

That is the version worth building a catalogue on, with styled or lifestyle images added around it where they earn their place.

The plain set then survives indefinitely and only the styled images need refreshing, which is a much smaller job.

For a business that keeps adding stock, that structure is worth considerably more than any individual image.

It is worth thinking about how long a plain set actually lasts, because people underestimate it substantially.

A well-lit product on a clean white background is as usable in ten years as on the day it was shot, provided the product itself has not changed.

That makes it the single most durable photography any small business commissions.

Styled and lifestyle images have a much shorter life and that is fine, because they do a different job.

The mistake is building an entire catalogue on the short-lived kind and then having to redo all of it.

Plain core, styled additions, and the additions get refreshed while the core stays.