Back in September I spent some time shooting for one of my clients who purchases vintage Chanel handbags and resells them on her website. This is yet another type of e-commerce shoot. As you have seen with my previous blogs about e-commerce photos, the product is obviously the focus, and quite often the only object in the photo. With clothing, there is typically an on-model shot as well, where the clothing is still the focus of the shoot and the model is simply a live hanger for the garment. For this shoot, the client wanted on-model shots. The focus still needed to be the handbags, however, the models needed to be dressed. So, this involved some choices in clothing and styling that did not detract from the handbags. As you can see in the following photos, the garments chosen were in basic colors which complimented the purse, typically without large patterns or textures.  Blacks, reds, and whites all helped to serve as a live background for the handbags.

Another consideration is the framing of the photo. Again, it is imperative that the purse be the focal point of the photo. By using a model but not including her entire face, you are drawn to the item instead of the eyes of the model. The model is simply a prop for the handbag instead of the other way around. In each photo above, if the photo had included the model’s entire body, the purse would not have been in the center of the photo. Instead, it would have been in the bottom 1/4 of the photo (in the case of the plaid handbag), or the top 1/3 of the photo (in the case of the black handbag).

Clearly there are many different types of e-commerce shoots and countless things to consider when shooting e-commerce photos. A few main points to remember: keep your product in mind, maintain clarity in the image, and take into account the structure of the photo.