6 Common Mistakes in Apparel & Clothing Photography

Every new year brings with it a host of new product photography trends and technologies. If you sell apparel, clothing, accessories, and related products online, your photography style should adopt these latest trends for improved engagement with your potential customers.

But while product photography trends change with time, the fundamentals continue to remain the same. As a fashion store owner or fashion photographer, your job is first to get the fundamentals right and then try to work on modern trends.

To help you work on the fundamentals of apparel and clothing photography, here is a list of 6 mistakes that you should avoid at all costs.

Let’s Discuss Each Point in Detail

1. Not Preparing the Garment

The primary purpose of product photography is to attract the customers that land on your product page. In other words, your product should look as attractive as possible. No matter how good the product photographer or photograph is, if the product itself is not thoroughly prepared for the photo, it will ever be able to deliver the expected results.

To start with, make sure that the clothing or apparel you want to photograph is clean and ironed or steamed. Ensure that there are no stickers, tags, or any other identifying materials on the garment. If the product has fabric strings or dust, you can use tapes or lint rollers to remove them.

2. Using Flat-Lay or Hanger Photography

Many of the e-commerce stores, online sellers, and photographers from the fashion segment continue to display their products either by laying them flat or on hangers. While this photography used to work in the past, the e-commerce industry and consumers have evolved to a great extent.

It is now essential to communicate not only the appearance but also the fit and shape of the product to the customers. The best way to do this is to make mannequins or live models wear your products. While live models should be preferred, you should at least use mannequins if you are low on budget or constrained by time.

3. Inadequate Lighting

Nothing damages the brilliance of a product as inadequate lighting does. If the lighting is not adequate, the photos will appear underexposed, and this will significantly impact their appearance and appeal in the eyes of the customers. Natural and bright lighting is generally ideal for fashion products.

Most online stores and fashion photographers prefer product photography in white background. You can consider the same as well to make sure that the product photos look bright and appealing.

4. Providing Only a Few Photos

Just like flat-lay and hanger photography, providing only one or two pictures of your product won’t work anymore. Fewer the number of product photographs, the more difficult it will be for the customers to visualize themselves wearing the product or understand the product quality.

So, you should try to upload at least 3 photos of every single product you have in your inventory. Most e-commerce platforms allow you to upload more than 3 pictures. For instance, Amazon allows you to upload up to 9 product pictures. Make sure that you take pictures of the front, back, and sides of the product, along with close-up photos of the detailing, zippers, and buttons.

5. Unprofessional Editing

A lot of store owners adequately prepare their products before the shoot, ensure proper lighting, and camera settings to take high-quality photos. But their product photos still fail to get the expected engagement. This might be because of your limited image editing skills.

You should be very good with aspects like background, colors, alignment, and cropping to add that professional touch to your product photos. Store owners can consider professional product photography services for the best results. Check out commercial photography rates and rest assured that the services are not as expensive as you’d expect.

6. Taking JPEG Pictures

The JPEG format is excellent for taking pictures that you want to upload to your personal social networking accounts.  The pictures look great and don’t take a lot of storage space. However, it is not the best choice for professional apparel and clothing photography.

JPEG pictures don’t look as good when you zoom into them, and the pixels can collapse at the time of converting the image to other popular formats. Most professional product photographers commonly use the RAW format as it gives more pixels to the images.

Ready to Improve Your Apparel and Clothing Photography?

No matter if you are an e-commerce store owner, an online seller, or an amateur product photographer, avoid the mistakes discussed in this post, and you are sure to get better results.

But as compared to other product categories like cosmetic product photography, they are more applicable in the fashion space as visuals play a significant role in the buying decision of the customers looking to purchase clothing and apparel online.

Watch out for these common mistakes so that you take highly engaging product pictures that could help you improve conversions.