Yes, You need good photos of clothes.
If you have an online store or even a brick and mortar store, you need to take photos of your products. It could be a flyer, a poster for the window, a post on facebook, or an online catalog, but you know the photo’s quality and beauty can make a big difference in sales.
The difference between a bad photo and a good photo means increases in sales by 2, 3, or more times.
In this post I’m not going to talk about technical issues, but about the way of displaying clothes to take pictures. Concerning technical issues, I have only one advice to give you: if you´re going to take the pictures yourself, use natural light instead of artificial light. You’ll get better results with sunlight than with a flash camera.
These are some of the possible ways of displaying:
Mannequins
Displaying clothes on mannequins or dress forms has some advantages:
- Unlike human models, they are always available.
- You can take photos whenever you want, and you don’t have to schedule a session.
- You only have the initial investment of buying the mannequins. But be careful, if you don’t have a mannequin that fits well, you won’t get good photos of clothes, no matter how beautiful the clothes are. If possible, buy your mannequin in a physical store. Take some clothes with you and ask if you can try on the clothes on the mannequin.
- You can achieve higher consistency. To achieve the some consistency with human models, you’ll have to take all the photos in one session.
The use of mannequins is highly recommendable in catalogs (both digital and printed). Not so recommendable on posters or advertising.
Human Models
The use of human models in photos of clothes is probably the most difficult way to display clothes. You need more equipment and more technical experience. And if you have to pay the models, it will be more expensive.
The main advantages are:
- It’s easier, for your customer, to visualize how the clothes will look when dressed.
- The use of an adequate model (in age, size and style) helps you position your brand for a specific type of client.
You can opt to take photos in a studio or outside. Taking photos outside is the best solution if your knowledge on photography are basic and you don’t want to hire a professional. The biggest disadvantage of taking photos outside is the consistency. The weather conditions are not always the same and so light will not be consistent.
In an online catalog, you’ll probably have to take photos of clothes in different moments. Usually we don’t have access to all the collection at once. So we’ll take some pictures today. Another ones the next week, and so on. And as pictures will be displayed side by side, the effect will not be very attractive.
Photos with human models are great for banners, posts, signs, etc. Not so good for catalogs with pictures side by side.
Clothes not dressed
The easiest and affordable solution is taking photos of clothes with no mannequins or models. The clothes can be hanged, or more frequently, displayed on the floor or on a table.
The main advantages are:
- No cost, or investment.
- You can reach a good consistency.
- It’s recommended for posters, advertising, posts in social media, and catalogs.
- It’s easier to show details.
This type of display is getting more popular.
And there are some variants, for example:
- Hanging the clothes on a wall.
- Laying the clothes on the floor (wood, stone)
- Displaying on a special environment (sand beach, grass, bar table, etc)
- Taking the photo in a studio, without background, and then, using a digital software (like photoshop), adding the background.
You can easily find someone to remove background from pictures, and add another background. And it’s not expensive. Go to fiverr.com and see prices and offers.