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Got schooled by a 19 year old on TikTok about product photos
I was bragging about my product photography setup to a buddy at a coffee shop last Tuesday. This kid next to me pipes up and says 'your shadows are all wrong, use natural light at 4pm instead.' I laughed at first but then he showed me his dropshipping store with his own pics using just a window and a white sheet. He was pulling in 200 orders a month with those cheap cell phone shots. Has anyone else had some random young person drop knowledge on them that actually made you change your whole approach?
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barbara2781mo ago
Yeah "shadows are all wrong" hit me hard too because I was spending big money on fancy softbox kits and totally ignoring the actual angle of the light. @iris_rivera44 hit the nail on the head with that foam board trick too, I started bouncing window light off a piece of white poster board from the dollar store and it completely changed how my jewelry photos look. The whole setup cost me like five bucks and now my stuff actually looks professional instead of like I'm hiding bad lighting with filters.
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iris_rivera441mo ago
Last summer I had a 16 year old kid at a skatepark tell me my whole eBay listing strategy was trash because I was using flash on my sneaker photos. He pulled out his iPhone 11 and took a pic of his beat up Vans in the parking lot at golden hour, and it legit looked better than my $500 lighting setup shots. I switched to shooting everything between 3:30 and 5pm near a window with a diffuser made from a shower curtain, and my conversion rate went up like 30% in two weeks. The kid was totally right about shadows too, hard light makes products look cheap and amateur no matter how good your camera is. Have you tried using a white foam board opposite your light source to kill those harsh shadows?
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