DIY Product Photography Using an iPhone

1. Class Introduction: Hi there, my name is Rose. I am a food and product photographer from the Philippines and a Skillshare Top Teacher. Photography started as a hobby for me and my husband, but overtime, free photo sessions turned into paid gigs and eventually grew to be a real business for us. Apart from taking photos of products to help local businesses increase sales and improve online presence. We also conduct workshops for online sellers who want to DIY their product photoshoot. One of the pain points that was shared with me is not having access to a professional DSLR camera. And what I would always tell my clients is that taking beautiful product photos. It's not just about the gear, but following photography principles, and that is what I have for you in this class, we will kick off with setting up a DIY home studio, followed by lighting tips and techniques. Then we will dig deep into iPhone camera settings to create stunning and scroll stopping product photos. I will also share my personal experiences when selecting props. And you will see me stage a scene and do actual styling. I will end the class by showing you a photo editing demo on the iPhone for that professional final look, basically you will see my entire process of shooting a product, but instead of using my DSLR camera, I will be using my iPhone. If you will follow along, you will have three photos of your product. One on a plain sweep background, another one with a prop or props. One with products styling. Anyone can join the class and no prior skills needed. May it be for your business, for your blog, for your social media, or as a favor to a friend. As long as you want to create beautiful product photos using your iPhone or your smartphone, then this class is perfect for you. So go get your iPhone and let's get started. 2. Class Project: Before we jump into the class, Let's talk about your class project. You will be needing just a couple of things. First, a light source. It could be natural light from the sun or artificial lighting from lamps and LED lights. Next is a flat surface where you can set up your background and shoot your products. Speaking of backgrounds, this could be as simple as a white poster paper which I will be using in most of the demos. It could also be a white fabric or a PVC backdrop. Of course, you will be needing a product to photograph and your iPhone for the camera. Optional materials are reflectors, props and a tripod. This steps and techniques that I will share with you in this class can help you create three types of product photos. One on a sweep or seamless background, one with props and one with products styling, don't worry, I will try my best to give as many examples as I can to help and guide you in creating your class project. I also recommend taking this class with a friend or with family for that extra boost of motivation and accountability. Plus you have more people to celebrate with. There is no pressure here, but once you're finished with your photoshoot, please upload your photos in the class project gallery so we can see it and give it some love. I hope you're as excited as I am. In the next lesson, we will officially start by setting up a DIY home studio. 3. Setting up a DIY Home Studio: In this video, I will show you how I will be setting up my home studio. This is going to be a very basic setup, so you can definitely follow along. Plus I will be using materials and things that can easily be accessible at home or in your office. The first step when setting up your studio is finding the best lighting. Lighting is the main ingredient when creating a photo. When there is no lighting, there is no photograph. Imagine if I close this curtain or if I close this window and I close all the lighting in this house, it will be just pitch black, but with light, you can see me somehow I look like a three-dimensional image to you. And that is because of shadows and the effect of light. So that is why it's very important in your product photoshoot. It's like in bread. When there's no flour, there is no bread, in music when there's no rhythm, There's no music. I would love to give them more cheesy example, but you get the point. So without lighting, There's no photo. This is our guest room that we turned into a studio and into an office. So this is a multipurpose room. And the room where in we have this nice window and I can get lighting from outside. My next step is to set up the base for my photo shoot. As promised, I wanted to give you as many examples as I can. So I will be showing you how I will set it up using a chair and a table. So let's start with a chair. In my case, I don't have a flat surface, so I will be using additional material to make a flat surface. So this is how it looks like. I need to position this chair in this area. Because if I move it just a little bit closer to the window, I am getting some shadows in my setup and we don't want that. So I'm putting it right here, so I'm finding the best spot where in I don't get shadows and I get the most balanced lighting from my window. And for me, this is that spot. Okay So we have our chair, we have our base. Next is our background or our backdrop. This is a poster paper that I got from a bookstore. how much is this? This is less than a dollar this is just 19 peso. It's very cheap, but I love that It's thick and it has a sturdy texture. So this is going to be our background and our backdrop. So we are creating a sweep. That means we're creating a seamless background. Alright, Next I have this tape. this is pretty much sturdy, but I wanted to support it. And then adding tape at the bottom. to support this part. And that is it. We already have our background, we have our base, and we have a seamless backdrop, which is very flattering when it comes to product photos that you will be uploading on e-commerce websites wherein you have this nice white background without any distraction and you're just focused on your product. So now that we have our light source, so we have our setup here, we have a base, we have our background. So next, our camera, which is the iPhone. For our product photoshoot, I will be using an iPhone 11 Pro Max. So we have those three cameras at the back. If you will be using an earlier version of iPhone, that's totally fine. These photos are taken using an iPhone 8. You may need to purchase an additional lens just to get rid of distortion. But you can still capture great, product photos using those phones. You can definitely start with that. But if you have iPhone 11 12 13 and so on, It's going to be better because we have the telephoto or what I call the macro lens, which is best when shooting product photos, especially products that are smaller in size. Now when shooting using your phone, you might want to use a tripod so that something is holding your camera and to avoid camera shakes, you can also use this. This is a cheaper one. You can also use this as a selfie stick. I'm just showing you this to encourage you that you can start with very basic materials, with things that are most accessible to you, affordable ones. So this is a multipurpose tripod that I also use with my DSLR. Now to be able to use my iPhone with it. I just got this extra adapter for smartphones. But this quick release plate, it came with a tripod. So what I'll do is just connect this adapter to the quick release plate. So i will be just using this making sure it's tight. Now that's done. You can now put your iPhone now that you have your quick release plate, you have your adapter, you have your phone, you can now put it in your tripod I can just slide it in and then use this to lock it. And I now have my iPhone all set up and I can now do whatever I want on my setup here. Alright, so now that we have our iPhone properly set up on a tripod, It's now time to take some test shots of our product. Let's start with our sunblock here. I have a habit of doing a test shot before going all-in into a photo session so I can address exposure and lighting issues right away. I find it helpful and efficient instead of going into the whole photoshoot and finding out my mistakes, 30 photos later. Next, for bigger products, you may want to use a table like this instead of a chair. For this setup, I am using a T Stand to hold this PVC material dual sided backdrop. These clamps came with a T stand and same with the chair. I am using tapes to secure the backdrop. This is my upgraded setup, using a table, perfect for shooting bigger products. In the next lesson, I will share some more lighting tips and techniques. See you there. 4. Lighting Tips and Mistakes to Avoid: Welcome to this lesson. So from our test shot, I was able to see that we're getting a lot of shadows and our scene is a bit dark. I wanted to make a bright and airy looking photo, because we're photographing a beauty product, we want it to look light and inviting and well-lit and pleasant. And I'm not just getting that with our test shot, so that's why it's important. So before you dig deep into your long photo session, It's good to see a test shot. You know how you can make adjustments. In this lesson, I will show you some more lighting tips and techniques that can help level up your product photoshoot using just your iPhone. So it doesn't matter what gear or what camera you are using. If you don't pay attention to basic photography principles, especially lighting principles, you may not end up taking professional and beautiful looking photos. That is what I will be sharing with you in this lesson. So first to get rid of the shadows, we can use a reflector. Reflector is anything white that you can use to bounce light from your light source back to your subject. So this is the effect of it. So this is with a reflector. I'm going to use this one. So this is with a reflector. As you can see. We're getting a brighter image and we're getting rid of those shadows here without the reflector and with the reflector. And again, it can be anything white that you can find at home. It can be this styro chunk that I got here at home. It could be this illustration board. Then you also have this side if you want to add more shadow into your scene, or if you want to use it as your black background. I also have a professional one here. So this is a more fancy one that I use for my portrait photoshoots. but it definitely just acts the same thing as the styro and illustration board that I showed earlier. So anything white that can bounce light from your light source back to your subject, you can use a reflector. So that's tip number one. Lighting tip number two or should I say lighting mistake that you should avoid is color casting. Since we are using a white background, white is a pure color and can easily be contaminated. If you'll notice I'm also wearing white to kind of help bounce light back into my scene. Now, what if I'm not wearing white and I'm wearing something bright? This bright colored shirt can affect my overall photo. So let's say I'm not too careful and I move closer to my scene, I will get a bit of color casting. Let me show you next lighting mistake that you should avoid is mixed lighting. So right now the setup that we have here, we're only getting light from this window. Now, here's how it looks like if we turn on the room light. So as you can see from our photo here, now that we have the room light turned on, we have additional shadows here because our light is above our subject. So you are getting a lot of shadows and this can result to our camera being confused with the white balance. So to avoid this altogether, turn off all the other light sources in your house or in your home studio. Make sure that whatever you choose as your light source to light your products or your subject, that's the only light source that you are getting. Sorry, there's a lot of light in that sentence. But again, turn off all the other light source in your setup and we're back to just one light source, and this is how it looks like. Finally, my last lighting tip for you is the quality of lighting. I am lucky right now that it's a bit of an overcast day. It's actually raining outside. So I'm not getting harsh or hard light onto my subject here. But if in case you are doing a photo session and direct sunlight is touching your subject and you don't like that. You can soften it using a cloth, a white curtain that you can place on your window or on your door. You can even use baking sheets. Anything thin and white, just to soften the light will greatly help soften the overall look of your photo. And that is it for lighting. Basically, you just need to remember that lighting is the main ingredient in taking product photos. That is how you compose a well-lit, balanced photo. It takes practice. It takes time. But the more you take photos, the more you practice, the more you will discover techniques that can really brighten up your photo. Plus if you really get into it, if you study lighting, you can even create dark and moody photos, whatever it is, you can control the overall look or you can achieve the vision that you have in mind. So what I shared are just basic tips and basic mistakes to avoid that can get you started. In the next lesson, we're going to dig deep into some iPhone settings to maximize it, in taking great product photos. See you there. 5. iPhone Camera Lenses: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to dig deep into the iPhone settings that we can adjust and use to bring up its full potential and create great product photos. So first, let's talk about those three cameras that you see at the back of this iPhone 11 pro. Most iPhone nowadays have the same three cameras set up at the back. If you have the non Pro iPhones, you will only have two. So you will only get wide and ultra wide. For this demo, we're going to focus on the iPhone that have the three lenses. So the first lens that you have is the ultra wide. So this is a 13 millimeter focal length lens. This is best for wide shots. You can see my hands here, you can see the reflector. So this is not very flattering when it comes to product photos, but you can use the wide lens when capturing landscape photos or travel photos because it is best for capturing large spaces, as you can see from my example here, it almost captured the entire room, which is not what I intended to do. Next is the wide lens. So this a 26 millimeter focal length. This is tighter than the ultra wide lens, so I will be using it later on maybe for flat lays, but still I'm not satisfied with how it looks. So let's move on to what Apple calls the telephoto lens. The focal length of this lens is 52 millimeters. So it's like having a macro lens, which is quite expensive if you have a DSLR camera. So it's amazing that you can have this feature using just your iPhone. So you have your phone, you have all these nice cameras, plus you get a telephoto lens. So That's awesome. So this is how it looks like with a telephoto lens. As you can see, there's no distortion compared to the ultra wide lens. The appearance of the product looks correct. I love that. It looks bigger. I think that's very effective when it comes to selling products on e-commerce websites. This is helpful, especially if you are shooting smaller sizes products, specifically beauty products. So that's it for the lenses. Let's now move on to the camera settings that we can adjust to really maximize our iPhone. 6. iPhone Camera Settings: So the first thing that you can see here is the format, for capturing product photos. Or if you're doing DIY product photoshoot, I would recommend to use the most compatible format on your iPhone because high efficiency is actually a smaller file size format, but since it's smaller in size, it actually compromises the image quality. So we don't want that. I want to edit my product photos a bit, so I want to use the most compatible instead of the high efficiency. Later on, I will show you how you can also capture photos in RAW using your iPhone. So we're done with the format. So next, let's move on to grid. You will see this under composition. Obviously this will greatly help in your composition. So when you turn this on, let me just show you. So without the grid, this is how your camera looks like. Now, if we turn on the grid, this is how it looks like. So you have those lines guiding you in composing your shot. This is extremely helpful, especially when you have horizontal lines or lines on your photo in making sure, especially when you're styling, which I will show you later on. That is it for the grid. Smart HDR, I would suggest that you turn it on because HDR means high dynamic range. So if your iPhone detects that, you need to capture the highlight details, the midtone details, the shadow details, then it will "smartly" is that a word? Do that. But then I always turn it on just to make sure that I get the high dynamic range version of my photos as much as possible. That really helps, especially in the editing room. So those are the settings that you need to take note of under the camera settings. Now, let's move on to the camera app itself. So from here you will see the .5, 1x and the 2x versions. So as you can see, we will be using the 2x version a lot. Next, you can adjust your exposure here. So when you press this button, there's an arrow pointing upwards button. So when you press that, you will see all these options here at the bottom. So you have your flash, which I don't use because this is what you get when you use your flash. So when you turn that on and you take a photo, this is the effect. And I just don't like the shadow, the harsh shadow that it created at the back. So it looks a little blown out to me. I love the effect of side lighting on a photo because it gives that three-dimensional effect. It add texture and depth, which is really nice when it comes to product photos and in all other photographs. So make sure to turn off a flash. So next live photo, I also turn it off because we are photographing a still life subject. And since we are using a tripod, There's absolutely no camera shake, no camera movement. So you can just turn off live photo to save memory. Live photo is best for capturing motion and moving subjects. for your product photo shoot, I recommend turning it off. So that's off. Okay, Moving on to our aspect ratio, I would like to stick with 4x3 If I want to make changes, I can just crop it in post-processing. We also have this feature where we can adjust the exposure manually. So right now, especially it's getting darker, so it's around five in the afternoon, so I'm not getting much light. So if I go to exposure and add brightness, as you can see, I can do that here so you can definitely use it if you feel like you're lighting is not adequate. But of course, as I told you before, if you can get the correct lighting as much as possible, I'd recommend you do that, but then this is an additional tool that could help a lighten up your overall scene. And if you want, of course, on the other end, if you want more shadows, then you can also do that here and reduce the exposure. So you can play with the exposure settings on your iPhone. So again, you can just press on this icon to go back. And again, let me just show you this is the icon for the exposure. And if you can't see these options right here, you can just press on this arrow for you to get these options. So next is the timer which I won't be using because I want to take photos in real-time, but I might use it later on if I will be adding human touch and if i will be the model or if I will be using my hands as model, I might be using the timer. But later on we will find out if we're going to use that. But that's how you can access it. And these are filters. The last icon are filters. And I don't think I'll be using any of it for our product photoshoots. I'll stick with original. Again, I'll just press this icon to go back. And then if I want to hide it, I'll just press this arrow. Another feature that I'd like to share with you that is available on most iPhone is the portrait mode. As you can see here, portrait can blur the surroundings of your subject. You also have options here for different light setup. So you have your studio light. So if you want a studio light effect on your product photos, you can definitely use that. You also have other options here like contour, lighting, stage, light. And you can make the adjustment. So you can definitely explore all of these settings here, see which one is most applicable or which one helps you capture the best product photo. But for me, I'll stick with natural lights is right now I'm still using natural light in my setup. So going back to our main camera setup, now I'm sure you've heard about RAW photos, where in photographers would capture photos in RAW format so they can do heavy editing on it. Can you do that using your iPhone? The answer is yes. There are a lot of third party applications that can enable you to capture RAW images using your iPhone. One is Lightroom for mobile. So I already have Lightroom installed on my iPhone, so I'll just go there now. So Lightroom. And then you have the camera option here. So you just press that. And then at the top here, you can select the file format if you want it to be JPEG or JPG. DNG is the raw format. Raw saves a lot of details or most of the details on to your image. So when you do heavy editing on it, you won't be destroying the image. But honestly, I don't do heavy editing when it comes to product photos. I just adjust the exposure and some colors and add clarity. But of course, I'm just sharing you that option just in case you want to go that route. You also have other camera options here. So you have automatic, you have high dynamic range, and you have professional. With professional, you can also adjust the exposure. You have the shutter speed, you have your ISO, you have your white balance. You can also do auto and if you don't like the settings, you can just click on Reset. That's just a quick run through of what you can do with your iPhone camera. There are a lot of features, additional applications, so you can get the best out of your iPhone camera. And it's amazing the kind of photos that you can create with it. So basically you just need to be patient with the settings, explore it, and really study the photography principles so they can work together in helping you capture great product photos. And finally, before we move on to our next lesson, it is a non-technical, non feature related tip. When it comes to iPhone, have a habit of wiping your camera lens. I always carry this soft cloth with me because I want to have clean lens whenever I want to use my iPhone camera. The thing is, our iPhones are multi-purpose. We use it as our calendar, we use it for phone calls, we use it for social media, because we're using it all the time and we're putting it in different places. It can accumulate smudge on your camera lens. That can be the reason why sometimes you get surprised that you're using an expensive iPhone and yet you get blurry or smudgy images. The reason behind it can be your dirty lens. So have a habit of wiping your camera lens with a soft cloth. Just make sure it's soft and it won't scratch it or anything like that. But that's another tip for you to get nice sharp images using your iPhone. In the next lesson, I will show you how adding a prop or props can make a huge difference on your overall photo. See you there. 7. The Power of Props: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to talk about props. You will notice that I have a different setup. What change is my light source, so it's already nighttime, so I don't have light from the sun. So that's a quick note right there. If you will be using natural light as your main light source, make sure to plan out your photo shoot because you cannot control it. You cannot control the appearance. It could be an overcast day, it could be really sunny, it could rain. Just a note there when dealing and working with natural lighting. Now, if you will be doing a lot of photo shoot and if you don't want the light source or natural light to limit your photography or your product photography. I would recommend getting a more professional artificial lighting. What I have now is a GODOX SL60W I use it for photo and video. So it's versatile and it's multipurpose for me because I create classes like this as well, so I use it for that too. But of course you can check out other artificial lighting that will suit your needs and your budget. Now, moving on to props. So what are props? Props are objects that you can add to your scene to support and add more meaning to your overall photo. The keyword there is support, not overpower. So when you're adding props to your scene, make sure that it support your product, that your product is still the star. You also want to check out the color of your props, making sure that you have a balanced photo. We will talk more about that as I show you how I will add props into my scene here. So my first step is to start small and start with minimal props. For example, I have this cute little shopping cart that I got from a department store. I think. So. I love to use it when I'm photographing beauty products for clients. Because for me, a shopping cart suggests a "buying me" message into a photograph. So let's see the effect. So first let me just show you a photo of these two products without the shopping cart. So this is how it looks like. It's good. It's well lit. You have your white background, it's non-distracting, but observe what happens when we add just one prop into our scene. So here's our shopping cart. And then I will be adding our products. I'll be just adding my reflector because I'm seeing a lot of shadows. And let me take a photo. As you can see, I am using my grid to guide me through the composition. So I want everything in the middle. So I'm using these lines to make sure that I have all the important elements on those lines are along those lines, as you can see from this photo, just by adding one prop into our scene, it conveys a different message. Now, I can use this photo or my client can use this photo whenever she has sale, whenever she has promos, and she can post this on her social media. And I feel like this will suggest shopping into the buyer's mind. It will help to convince them to buy this product. I also love that It's so cute and I love the pink handle. So that's another tip. When you're selecting props, you have to be careful with the colors and with the size of it. Makes sure that again, I'm very repetitive when it comes to not overpowering your product or the main subject. So that is it for our tiny shopping cart. Now I also have other props here. Again, these are just suggestions and examples to get your creative juices flowing. But of course, you can use things that you have at home that you have access to or stuff that you see on thrift shops or dollar stores. The main goal here is to make your photo look interesting, more beautiful, pleasant, inviting, and of course to help sell the product you are photographing. Next, I'll be showing you some other props that I have in my collection. So I have these blocks. So it'll be just putting it here. So I have different sizes. Now we will try and use it on this product that we're photographing for this demo. So my favorite way is using this two blocks right here. So why do I do it? Because it helps add depth, texture and more interests into our scene. I also love that we are using this seamless white background. And if we add more white props, I love that It looks clinical, it looks clean, it looks minimalist, but still it looks stylish. So I'll just be adjusting my camera. We're now photographing in landscape mode or landscape orientation. More of that later. Okay, I'm just making adjustments here, so I'm adjusting my tripod and then I'll be adjusting these blocks or these cubes. So as you can see, I started with just one prop, which is the shopping cart. Now I'm moving on to two. This is to show you that as we build up more props, we're creating a different look. So next I'll be putting in our vitamin C gel serum, put it here. And then our tea tree, sorry, this lemon tea whitening. of course let's not forget my reflector. So you can see it's removing all those dark shadows. We also have this feature on the iPhone that I forgot to mention in the iPhone settings. It's the manual focus where you can just tap your finger to wherever you want to focus on your scene. So whenever you see this box, this square box, that means that is where it is focused. Now the iPhone 11 Pro has 1.8 aperture for the telephoto lens. So it helps to get that subtle, blurry background. So if ever you notice that you, your main subject or your product is not in-focus, just make sure to tap on it, to manually focus or to manually adjust the focus. Now when I say props, It's not limited to just objects that you can add to your scene. Props also include your backdrops and your background. For example, these photos I took using a black poster paper. And as you can see, it has a different effect. It looks elegant, there are more shadows. It also helps to focus on the product. So when you're doing your very own product photo session or your product photoshoot, you can explore and experiment with different colors of backgrounds, poster, paper, anything that you have at home or the nearest bookstore to really help put your vision to life and help create that stunning product photo. Now, the next lesson is even more exciting. We're going to add more props to create an aesthetic and more interesting photograph. See you there. 8. Product Styling: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to talk about product styling. So what is product styling? It is simply arranging elements or arranging props in your scene so you can create a more aesthetically pleasing image to make it more interesting, to tell a story, to convey a message. It's like you're staging your photoshoot. You're going to be adding more props or anything any element to help you tell the story or to bring that vision that you have in mind. My very first step when it comes to styling is to get inspired. When I was just starting out, I had a hard time with styling because I did not want to copy other people's work. But over time, I realized that copying and getting inspired are two different things. So you can definitely do that. You can get inspired by other people's work, your favorite photographer's work, for example, for this photo shoot, here are the photos that I saved from Pinterest to help get my creative juice flowing, my next step is to use color and composition to guide in styling your scene. When you check out the color that best compliments yellow, it's purple. And I'm lucky because we have a front yard filled with flowers. And I have this flower which I can use as a prop to my scene. So I'm just continuing on my setup earlier. I'm just adding these flowers to my scene. And of course my magic reflector. How could I forget? Take a photo.. And what's helping me position or arrange my setup here are composition guides that I learned through the years and through countless photo shoots. So composition is how you arrange the elements in a photo. For me, the most important composition tool that you can use is visual weight. For example, you look at this photograph, you can visualize whether it's heavy on this side or this side, if it looks awkward and you can just go from there. So whenever you look at photos, you know what's pleasing, you know what's a bit awkward. So you can use that in setting up your very own styling. my tip, so you can get better at styling is to really look at other people's work, study their styling, study what colors they're using. What's the direction of lighting. learn to read images so it will help you once you are styling your images, you have to kind of get obsessed with photography and with looking at other people's photos, or with practicing so that you can develop your very own photography. So another composition rule that I applied here is the rule of odds. So I have three flowers. So rule of odds means using odd numbers in choosing the number of your props, your product, or the elements in your scene. Another composition guide that I used in this styling is the rule of thirds. Rule of thirds is putting elements or important elements in your photo on the third intersection or the third line. So as you can see here, the vitamin C gel serum is on my rule of thirds. For me, it looks pleasant, it looks balanced, so I'm just putting out my magic reflector as well, and I'm gonna be taking a photo. Now. I feel like this is nice. I love the combination of purple and yellow. I loved that they complement each other, but I feel like I'm still lacking something because these are organic beauty products. I wanted for it to look natural and clean at the same time. So what I'm thinking is adding more leaves into my styling and see if that will give me the photo that I have envisioned when I was planning for this photo shoot, we were not able to really dig deep into planning and the nitty-gritty of props and styling. I have another class for that, so make sure to follow me here on Skillshare. But I just want to give you a quick note here that it is important that before you go into a photoshoot, you take notes, you really decide what is your goal for your photo shoot. What message you want to convey, what is the product you are shooting. A very great tip or technique that helps me whenever I choose props and style my scene is using the product adjective cheat sheet that I will be attaching in the project and resources part of this class. So from there you will see different adjectives. Look out for at least three adjectives that best describes the product you are shooting. And then use it as a guide when you select props and when you style your scene. For example, for my styled set up here, I want it to look natural, organic, inviting. That's why I'm using leaves, I'm using flowers, I'm using white props. Maximize that when you're in the planning stage of your photo shoots. So going back to our scene here, so I'll be just adding this one last leaves. And as you can see here, the visual weight, it's heavy on this side. So we're getting a bit of negative space here. But you know why It's okay? Because the client can use this space, this negative space here for text for adding promo sale or anything. So for me that's okay. But of course, if you will be uploading, or sharing this photo as is, I will be removing this pile of leaves here to make it more balanced. So we are forming this triangle or this pyramid. So for me, this looks more balanced and pleasant. And of course, Let's get this magic reflector here, my magic reflector, to remove the shadows and take a photo. My final tip when it comes to styling and selecting props is using the ingredients of the product you are shooting as props This way it helps tell your audience or your viewers what the product is made of or what is the main ingredient of the product So with just one look, they already know. And I also love those photos that you can smell, photos that you can taste for this photo shoot, I visited our fresh produce market and got these lemons when selecting props, make sure to select the photogenic ones, make sure that they will look good on camera. For the next lesson, I will be using this lemons to style our next scene and to show you how I will be setting up a flatly. So I'll see you there. 9. Shooting Flat Lay for a Beautiful Bird’s-Eye View: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to talk about a flat lays. I will show you more styling techniques, but this time we're using the flatly or the top view angle. More of that later. But let me first show you how I will do that or how I will set up my iPhone. I'm just adjusting my tripod. Now. I need it to be taller because we will be photographing this way. Alright, so this is our setup for the flat lay. I love this tripod because it can give me this capability. So you saw earlier that I was able to shoot straight on now I can in top view or in flat lay. And I loved that it's sturdy It can really hold your camera. If you will be doing a lot of flat lays, I strongly recommend a tripod or anything that can hold your camera like this securely. So now that we have our camera or iPhone setup, Let's now cut our lemons. Okay, so my knife is not doing very well. So that's another tip when it comes to styling, make sure you have a sharp knife and make sure that you know basic knife skills because it will really help in your styling. So my next prop is this glass baking tray. So again, you can definitely maximize things that you have at home. So this is used for cooking or baking, but I'm going to use it as my base or as my other layer. That's another styling technique you can use, layering. So my first layer is our backdrop here. And then our second layer is this glass baking tray. And then our lemons for our next layer. And then reflector. Because I'm getting a lot of shadows. That's nice. So here's our product. Oops. Okay, it looks nice, but I think I'm going to add water. So good thing I have that prepared because I feel like I'm gonna be needing it because, you know, our adjective is fresh, natural. Okay. Again, using my manual focus here and taking the shot. Let me try adding the leaves into this setup. That's why I love having a tripod so you can arrange your setup while looking at it on your camera screen. So adding more lemons then take a photo. Let me see if I can also include our toner because it's also made of lemons. So lemon tea. So that is it for this style. Now I want to explore on the other ideas that I have on my Pinterest mood board. So I'm just cleaning this up and I'll be trying different a different background, a different style. So just stay tuned. I'm back. So I wanted to try a different style this time. So I will be just changing our backdrop or our background from this plain white background to this. I love the design and the overall look of this backdrop. It looks like a bathroom scene. And I love this line from the upper left hand going here. So for me it will add to that diagonal composition, which is another composition guide that you can use in your product photography. Here's our base. So again, this is just an affordable, cheap, double-sided backdrop that I got online. So I'll try to include all the things or all the materials, gears that are used on this photo shoot and attach it as a PDF guide on this class. So. Check that out. The lemons are back! when life gives you lemons, use them for styling. On a serious note, this is my other favorite thing about styling and photography because you create something from nothing. You create your own style, you create your own setup. And for me it's just fun. It, it inspires me. It gets me into that good mood whenever you have envisioned something and you were able to bring it to life and really create a photograph that looks exactly what you have imagined. But of course, if, for example, you don't get the image that you pictured, it's okay. You can just try again. You keep practicing and continue being inspired by other people's work. So let me get the leaves. It's like an art project which I love. But then of course you don't style without guidance or without following any composition rules or guides. They're there to make your life easier, to make your photography easier. So make sure to check them out. Follow them as guide at first and then as you go along, as you discover your style, as you discover and cultivate your skill. Of course, you don't have to go back to styling and composition guides. You can definitely just go with the flow, but it's nice to use them as a guide when you're just starting out. So I'm just using some leading lines here. More flowers here. That's cool. Then let's add the lemons. So again, diagonal composition. Or actually, I'll just put it wherever and then I'll just put something that I can place our product here like this. And diagonal composition. I'll be using this other lemon. You're seeing me style as in real time, which is super cool. I hope this is helping you a lot in planning for your next photo shoot. You can see I'm just going with the flow, whatever I see is, balanced and pleasant, but then I have composition tools and guides in mind whenever I arrange elements on my image or my setup. So as you can see, I still have the product in the middle and on a diagonal. I'm just adding more lemons into our scene. Some are peaking into the frame to give that illusion or that feeling that there's more outside of this frame. So that's a nice styling technique when you want to leave the rest into your viewer's imagination. Something like that. This kind of styling for me or this kind of composition where some items, or some elements in the frame are just peaking in through or are cropped, it gives that illusion that there's more outside the frame, there's more happening and it gets them curious and it adds interests and drama to your photographs. To me, it's a successful image. When you get your viewer interested and curious and when their eyeballs are glued on your photograph, that's two thumbs up. So I'm happy with how this looks, but I'm seeing a lot of shadows here. Again. Our reflector here, magic reflector. Let me take a photo using the manual focus on our iPhone with just a tap of a finger. And boom. And that is it for our styling and flat lays. Now, before I show you how I edited all the photos that I've been showing you all throughout this class using a third party app called Lightroom for mobile. I wanted to just quickly show you the orientations and angles that you can maximize when photographing products using your iPhone. See you in the next lesson. 10. Shooting Angles and Orientation: We are almost done. In this lesson, I will share tips about shooting angles and orientation to help create the best product photos using your iPhone. First step is to identify the purpose of your product photos. Will you be using it for Instagram ads or for stories, for Facebook ads or your website. From there you can plan in advance what are the angles, orientation, as well as the crop of your images. Most platforms will automatically crop your photo to fit a supported ratio. Please check out projects and resources for the social media Image Size cheat sheet. Now to show you how we apply this in my photo shoot, Let's go back to our products for the vitamin C gel serum, since it's a bottled product and it looks tall, it is best to be photographed using the straight on or eye level angle. So as you can see, this is how it looks like. Now, if you want it to look straighter, there is this hack where in, you can turn your phone upside down and it will look like this. Next for our sunblock. So it has a different characteristic, it has a different shape. So I don't think this will be flattering to be photographed straight on because this is how it will look like. And you can't see the logo. So this is when you can use the 45 degrees to 75 degrees angle. And this is how it looks like. Now, the next shooting angle is the overview, top view or what is more popularly known as the flat lay. For our sunblock here. I don't think it's very flattering photographed at the top view angle because this is how it looks like. Yeah, it's nice. You can see that there's a container, There's the logo, but then you can't really see how thick the container is. You can't see the texture or the characteristics of the product. So this is still best photographed at this angle, which is the 45 to 75 degrees angle. That is why you have to really explore and experiment with your products and with your styling to see what shooting angle is best, to really capture the characteristics, the texture, and which shooting angle is more flattering for your product. Now, moving on to orientation. So as you can see, I've been photographing this way. This is portrait orientation. So this is best for a bigger real estate, a bigger space. So much space here where in you can put text. But then if we photograph, let's say these three products, it looks a bit crowded. But if we do it like this, so we have more space. So this is the landscape orientation. And as you can see from our previous lessons, I used the landscape orientation for my staged setup. So you can do the same thing. Find out which orientation is best for your product photos. And as you take photos on different orientations, plan out the crop in advance. For example, for this photo, you have more space to cut it into an Instagram post to a 1x1 dimension. So really take time to experiment and explore and really work on bringing out the best on your iPhone and on your product photos. Because at the end of the day we want to sell these products using the photos we took, and that is it for orientation and angles. In the next lesson, I will show my workflow in editing photos I took using the iPhone for that fabulous professional final look. See you there. 11. Photo Editing: Why do I edit my photos? Because I believe it's a crucial part of the creation process and it's my chance to correct even tiny mistakes I made during the photo shoot. For example, these are the original photos of the vitamin C gel serum. And these are the edited ones. Let's be honest. The edited ones look better, look more professional and inviting. The best part is it took me just a couple of clicks and adjustments to achieve that final look. I use Adobe Lightroom for both work and personal photo editing. For photos I took using my iPhone. I use Lightroom for mobile. It is a free app that can give you more than enough options to edit and transform your photos. Of course, you can opt to use a different app if you are more comfortable or used to it. For this demo, I will be using Lightroom for mobile. So the first step is to import the photos from my camera roll to Lightroom. Then I will choose one photo to edit. My usual workflow is to crop, adjust the exposure and the color, add effects and export. So let's start with the crop. For example, I will be uploading this product photo on Instagram. So the best crop will be 1x1 So this is the square crop. So I'll just adjust it to make sure it's in the middle. And then check. Then next I want to adjust the exposure so I want a brighter looking image. So what I can do is to add exposure. I can also add contrast and then add more highlights. And to make it look even brighter, I can remove the shadows just a bit because I still want for it to look three-dimensional. Maybe just 15. And then add more whites do it. So as you can see, just adjusting the exposure or the light setting here on Lightroom for mobile, we're already getting a different image. So next I want to adjust the color. The first thing I want to correct is the white balance. I can see that it's a bit yellowish. So let's see if pointing here will make a difference. How about here? Or here? Let's see. Yeah, that's better, but I want to make it a bit cooler so I can adjust the temperature. It's like manually adjusting the white balance. So let's go to temperature. So this is cool and warm, so I want it to be a bit cooler. So I think this is a more correct white balance for this photo. As you can see, this is the before and this is after the light and white balance adjustment. Now, I want it to be a bit more colorful, so I will be adding vibrance, just 20. I won't be using saturation because I feel like the colors are too much. And for me it doesn't look real and it's not flattering when it comes to product photos. So if you want a more saturated look, I will recommend to use vibrance instead of saturation. But of course, if you see a need for it, then you can definitely go for saturation. But I'm just sharing with you my very personal experience with editing products. So next, what if I want to desaturate the red a bit on this photo. So I can just go to mix. Then I can adjust individual colors in here. So in this photo we only have red and yellow. So as you can see, if I desaturate red, it's doing definitely that. It is desaturating it. But of course, if we saturate it, then that is what will happen. But of course I want to desaturate that. So negative 15, I think is the right spot. And then for the yellow, we can also saturate it if we want or desaturated. For this photo. Maybe we just leave it as it is. And I am done with the color adjustments. So next I want to add effects. So I wanted to add clarity. Maybe just ten and a bit of texture. I'm happy with this. I won't be adding vignetting because this is how it will look like. So I don't want that. So I'm skipping vignetting. for the detail Yes, I want to add sharpening, so maybe just 50. But I don't want to sharpen noise or the highlight areas of this photo. So I will do masking. What masking we'll do is sharpen just the one or just the detail of the photo with lines. I think it's a smart way to do that and adding sharpness to the detail as well. Maybe just 40. Okay. So let me see if enabling lens correction will make a difference. Not really because we're already using a telephoto lens, which removes distortion on a photo. If you are using the ultra wide lens, then you might need it. And this is our before and after. As you can see, this is a brighter looking image. For me, it looks more professional, it's prettier, and the good part is whatever changes I made on this photograph, I can copy to the other photos I took, as you can see, I took different photos with different styling. So instead of me doing everything all over again, I can just copy the settings here. So Copy Settings. I want to copy the color, light, color effects detail, not the crop because it might be different for the other photos. I'm pressing check and I will be going to the photos I want to copy the settings to. So for example, this one with the blocks. So you just need to press the circle icon with the three dots. And then this will be the options. So just click on Paste Settings. And voila, this is our before and after. And this is just with a few clicks. So from here I can adjust the crop. So for this one, I want to unlock it and make the adjustment myself. I don't want to use the pre-installed or the pre added crops. I'm happy with that. Moving on to the other photos. So the same thing, I can just click on the three dots icon and then paste settings. And for this photo I can just add more light, more highlights, more whites, and maybe some more texture. And this is our before and after. I can just do the same thing with all of the photos and I will get the same result. So as you can see, just a few clicks, we're getting a more professional brighter and prettier image. So my final step with photo editing is exporting it for whatever purpose I have intended for the photo. So to export you just press on the Share icon and then either export to camera, roll or "export as" so you can adjust some of the export settings. So for Instagram, the best image size or the best dimension is 1080 or 1080 pixels. And then image quality you can leave at 100. And from here you can also include a watermark. But I won't be doing that for this photo, but then I can just click on check. Once I'm done, then I can just go on my Instagram and upload that edited photo. That is it for photo editing, as you can see, just a couple of clicks made a huge difference. This is why I encourage you to never skip this step and make that photo as fabulous as you see you in the next video. 12. Final Thoughts: And that is it for this class. To summarize. You can set up a home studio with simple and accessible materials such as chairs, tables, poster papers, curtains, and styro chunks. You can add more interest and meaning to your photos using props. You can even go all out by staging a scene and styling your product. You can maximize your photos by using effective shooting angles and orientation. You can make it even better by applying basic editing. And finally, you can do all this using just your iPhone. If you have questions, feel free to start a discussion and I will answer as soon as I can. You can also follow me here on Skillshare, so you will be notified when I publish more classes about DIY product photography, composition, lighting, and styling. I hope you found this class valuable, but either way, please leave a review so you can help other students in deciding if this is the class for them. Thank you so much for sticking around and choosing this class to learn more about iPhone and product photography. I will be waiting for your class projects. So have fun and I'll see you soon. Bye.