10 Best Sports Product Photography Tips For Online Sports Shops
Updated on October 31, 2022 in Photography by Alifiya Mustafa
Sports product photography includes the techniques of all types of product photography such as clothing photography, packshot photography, reflective photography, and more.
You need to make sure that throughout the shoot, you maintain the emotion of the sports in your images while taking exceptional sports product photos.
Follow these 10 sports photography tips to attract more customers and sell more.
10 Best Sports Product Photography Tips
1. Keep your product clean
The number one sports product photography need is to keep your product clean. It means there should be no dust, scratches, smudges, or wrinkles if we talk about sportswear.
With a clean and brand new product, half of your job is done at taking beautiful product images.
2. Take shots from multiple angles
Product photography is done with the aim to sell products online. Your customers want to explore the product from all angles to determine how your products look.
Make sure that along with the usual front and back shots, you also take a few close-up shots to show the details on the products.
For products like action sports shoes, I’d also suggest you take the images of the sole and a few macro shots to show off the stitching, logo, and texture on the shoes.
This sports product photography tip equally applies to sports clothing photography too. When the customers have a number of different angles to look at your product, they feel more confident in buying your products.
3. Take care of reflections on metal
Different sports products are made of different materials. And, a few things like badminton and tennis racket or cricket helmets are made partially with metal.
With such products, you must take care of the reflections. Set up your lighting in a way that causes minimum reflections.
Use white and black foam boards to spread light evenly and absorb any extra light. However, if it’s still hard to avoid reflections, you can always fix it during the post-production.
4. Capture in-action shots
One of the most important sports product photography tips is to take in-action shots. Such shots are necessary so that the customers can better relate to your products.
In-action shots also explain how the product can be used in real life and what would be the actual look and size of the product.
Make your models wear or use the sports product and then capture images. Such sports photography shots can also be used for social media posts along with using on your website.
5. Focus on your model’s expressions
Your model’s expressions must reflect a sporty feel. They can either make or break your product image.
Experiment with different expressions to display different emotions. Serious expressions reflect dedication, strength, and fearlessness. Happy emotions reflect health, willingness, and satisfaction. Whereas, a more joyful and cheerful image may reflect victory.
It completely depends on what you want to convey through your sports photography. Also, it depends on the nature of the sport.
Sports like boxing are more aggressive than sports like table tennis. Thus, make sure that your model’s expressions go well with the nature of the sport too.
6. Capture 360 shots
360 photography is very popular in sports photography, especially for shoes and sports equipment.
It is another great way to offer a complete 360 view of the product to your customers. It allows them to explore your sports product from all angles and have a better look at it; just the way they get in a physical shop.
360 photography also makes you look more unique, professional, and trendy and allows you to make more sales.
7. Use the ghost mannequin effect
The ghost mannequin effect is about displaying a hollow 3D structure of the product without any model or mannequin.
The ghost mannequin effectively eliminates any distractions and allows only the product to be the focus.
With clean invisible ghost mannequin shots, the customers can better imagine themselves in the product and make faster buying decisions.
The effect can be created in Photoshop and it also saves you the cost of hiring a model or buying and maintaining the mannequin.
With an invisible ghost mannequin effect, your sports product photos stand out from the rest of the competition and make you look more professional and unique.
8. Keep the background clean and consistent
The best advice for every online sports store is to keep their product images clean, consistent, and professional.
Use a white or light-colored background. Make sure that the saturation, shadow effect, and light direction are similar in all your product photos to maintain consistency.
This enhances the look of your product pages, pleases your customers, and makes them trust your professionalism and products.
On the other hand, inconsistent, attractive, and cluttered images can put you in a bad light and push your customers to leave.
9. Experiment with cool photography equipment
Get creative with your sports product photography. You can take inspiration from magazines, Pinterest, or your competitors to come up with cool sports photography ideas.
Capture some splashy photos with water or colors. Make use of sand and dust to create amazing effects with cricket and tennis balls. You can also use neon lights and gels for black and dark background photography.
Such sports product photography enhances the feel of sports in an image and looks highly engaging. You can use these shots as the secondary images on your website as well as on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
10. Take care of post-production
With regular handling and placing of products from one place to another in different directions, it’s nearly impossible to avoid imperfections.
Your product might get some unremovable wrinkles, scratches, smudges, fingerprints, and dust despite regular cleaning.
Thankfully, such major imperfections can be taken care of at the time of product photo editing. Use different tools and techniques to remove distractions and imperfections from your sports product photography to make them look attractive and engaging.
Bonus Read
Sports product photography involves various techniques to capture amazing product photos. If you do not have the time or expertise to carry out the necessary post-production activities, just outsource product photo editing with PixelPhant.
Pixelphant’s professional photo editing services can help you with background removal service, creating the ghost mannequin effect, color correction, product retouching, and more to make your look more professional and consistent. Test our service now for free👇.