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Honest eCommerce Podcast : The Truth About DIY, Lifestyle, and Product Photography with Jeff Delacruz

Author: Annisa Davila
Date Created: 2021-02-12
Table of Contents
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Check out our latest feature on the Honest Ecommerce Podcast. Our President Jeff Delacruz had the chance to chat with podcast host and ecommerce selling expert Chase Clymer. They touch on a lot of great topics that can help business owners at any stage figure out their brand's eCommerce photography strategy. We talk about the perceived value from high-quality images, when should you consider hiring pros or agencies, why lifestyle photography is expensive, and so much more!

For some insights into ecommerce photography, best practices, and other tips to make your listings really pop, listen now!

Ep. 107 - The Truth About DIY, Lifestyle, and Product Photography with Jeff Delacruz

[00:00] Intro

Jeff Delacruz:

... Photos, the only thing that your customers are going to see online before they buy. This is your chance to show them what your product is.

Chase Clymer :

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, where we're dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running an online business does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. If you're struggling with scaling your sales, Electric Eye is here to help. To apply to work with us, visit electriceye.io/connect to learn more. Now let's get on with the show.

Chase Clymer :

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Chase Clymer :

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. Today, we're welcoming to the show yet another photography expert. Seems to be a theme lately. And you know how I always harp about how creative is the cornerstone of a successful business. Jeff Delacruz from Prints On White. I said that wrong, sorry. Products On White Photography. How are you doing today?

Jeff Delacruz:

I'm doing really great. How are you doing Chase?

Chase Clymer :

Just making mistakes in the intro, but it's a minute in and at this point, let's just let it roll.

Jeff Delacruz:

All right, let's do it.

Chase Clymer :

It lets people know that I'm human, and I make mistakes, and sometimes I drink too much coffee and it makes me jittery.

Jeff Delacruz:

2020, man. That's the theme.

[01:56] Jeff’s photography experience

Chase Clymer :

Yeah, you've got to stay awake for work somehow. Awesome. So we're talking about Products On White Photography is the business that you founded. You've been a photographer for 19 years now?

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. Yeah, I came up through the ranks as a freelance photographer. About nine years ago, I started Products On White Photography, also known as POW for short. And yeah, we've photographed products on white backgrounds for ecommerce businesses and Amazon. And we've been around for nine years now.

Chase Clymer :

How did that concept come about? Were you just getting hit up all the time to kind of do the same thing over and over? Or did you see a need in the market?

[02:19] Seeing a need in the market

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah, so about nine years ago, we were just getting calls from Amazon sellers, mostly Amazon sellers just looking to get one or two products photographed. So back then there wasn't a really easy solution to get that done.

Jeff Delacruz:

Just to give you an idea, when you hire a freelance photographer, you usually hire them for a day rate and then there's this whole production behind it, a pre-production period. Usually starts at around $1,500 to $2,000 a day. And if you just needed one white background photo, it was just a ludicrous deal. So we were like, "There's just got to be a way to do this easier." And if you need one photo, there was no place for you to go.

Jeff Delacruz:

So that's why we created this concept. We created an online ordering system where you can place your orders online. We created a system where you can provide shock direction pretty easily, and then just streamline the process with software where we update you along the way and send you your stuff.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah, it sounds like you're building a pretty efficient system over there. And what's funny is my business partner at the agency, I actually used to shoot products for his old ecommerce business.

Jeff Delacruz:

Oh yeah.

Chase Clymer :

And that was just one of the ways that we got to know each other a bit better. So it's funny. It comes full circle. I'll tell you what, shooting products on white is an acquired skill. It took me a while to figure it out. You need a lot of good lighting for sure. So, that's probably a good transition. We'll talk about kind of the gear about doing it yourself versus hiring someone else in a minute.

[03:48] Products on a white background

Chase Clymer :

But I guess shooting products on a white background, that's kind of just the default image everybody wants on a store. I believe there's even been, not audits, but studies done that show that is the number one type of photography that you need for your business, that's going to move the needle kind of on a conversion rate factor versus anything else. Do you have any of those facts? Have you learned anything along the way that kind of touts the importance of this?

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty common sense if you go to a website and you see all these distractions, when you're looking at the product page, you might be wondering, "Am I going to get all these other props that are in the shot?" And I think when people go to the product page, they're ready to buy. They're interested in what the actual product is. So maybe their experience was they entered your website, they got influenced by the branding images, the lifestyle images. They're like, "Yeah, this feels right to me. Now I just need some cream" or something like that. I need this lotion. Now, I want to see what comes in that lotion package. I want to see what the ingredients are. I want to know what kind of benefits and what I'm kind of getting with this thing. I don't want to be inundated with more branding. And I think that can be distracting.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah.

[05:27] High quality image = perceived value

Jeff Delacruz:

As far as stats go, there was an eBay study that came out maybe about seven or eight years ago that talked about that. But it was more focused on the difference between DIY product photography, where you're just kind of setting up on your desk and taking a photo versus a professional white background photo and the white background photo converts more. Just the idea.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. I think it almost lends itself to just kind of the professionalism and the value behind it and the quality of it. If they can make the investment in a high end image, the value must be there of the product. And I think there's definitely a correlation. We talk about it in a previous episode of there's a correlation between high quality imagery and perceived value.

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. That's very astute. I always say the photo's the only thing that your customers are going to see online before they buy. They're not going to the store, they're not picking it up, they're not looking at it, they can't smell it, taste it, feel it. This is your chance to show them what your product is. So why do you want to go cheap at this really important moment and just set it on your desk and take a cell phone shot?

Jeff Delacruz:

And the thing is, if you're selling this product over and over and over again, every time you get an impression on that image, your customers or potential customers are making that crucial decision whether or not to add that to cart. And if those photos are bad, I don't know if I would push that button.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. I mean, that makes total sense.

Chase Clymer :

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[07:11] Image sets for product listings

Chase Clymer :

So let's talk about what makes a good ecommerce product listing. Let's roll with this idea of this hypothetical lotion that someone wants to buy. If someone asked your opinion, what would the image set look like for a product like that?

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah, I think there's a lot of kind of common misconceptions or maybe people just aren't thinking about it like I do every day. But I mean, we really want to divide our listing up into kind of two sections. One is this main listing image. And this main listing image is the image that's going to be on your Google Shopping, it's going to be... When compared to other products, this will be the one that's shown. And you really want that to be just on a white background, what you are going to buy. You want it to look nice. You want it to look crisp and you want to show your customers what they're going to get. But then we're talking about secondary listing images after that. So once they click into the product, there are these other bottom listings and on a Shopify template that usually those are below the other images.

Jeff Delacruz:

And what I see people typically do is they'll just do like a front back inside and call it good. But I really think that customers want to go beyond that front, back inside. They really want to see images that tell them more about what they're getting, that kind of sell them the product. So these images are your opportunity to focus on features and benefits of the product.

[09:08] Should it just be white?

Jeff Delacruz:

Instead of just showing the back, talk about the ingredients using infographics that call out these different parts of this lotion. For example, maybe put a smear on the surface and show how sheer it is and show how soft it is. Maybe you also want to do some lifestyle images to show who this product is meant for and show it in action, being used and try and add a little bit of context to that product. And then if you have the budget, maybe do a little product video or do a 360 on the product to show it spinning around, just to add a little bit more information about what they're getting. So the difference is selling versus showing.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. I think that just having that, it's not in a really hero shot, but it's like that main image on white and then front, back, and side is definitely a lazy way to do it. There's no context for scale, even. If a picture's on a white background, you can't tell if that thing's two inches tall or 20, you kind of really need to put it into context with an actual environment or a human being, or where it's going to be used.

Chase Clymer :

You can tell a story with images and you can tell the features and benefits if you think about it long enough, just with a still image and that's going to help you with the sales. So what you guys offer there and kind of what we spoke about here is the main hero image, it's being on white, does it necessarily need to be on white or are people finding success on a more branded color?

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. There's opportunity to get creative with our company. The way we work is you just provide shot direction and then we match it. So if you want to do more creative stuff, maybe it's a group shot with a product overhead with different props around it. We can do something like that. You just got to set it up, take a cell phone shot of kind of the arrangement you're looking for, because how would we know unless you did something like that. And then send us your stuff and send us the props and then we'll set it up, but we'll light it and retouch it and make it look perfect.

Jeff Delacruz:

And the example you gave, Chase, where you're talking about a background color, the way we shoot these products on a white background, we can easily clip out the background and change the color of the background to just about any color pretty easily. And we have a lot of tutorials on how to do this, or we could do it for you. We just got to know. This is, the hard part is really just allowing your imagination to roam and how can I create my images so that they're interesting and they enhance my brand and they tell the story of what I'm trying to do.

[10:56] Good lighting is a good foundation

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. It's not only that, but now that you're talking about capturing these images in a way that allows you to manipulate the backgrounds of it like that, just to me, I have a photography background to be a nerd, but essentially if you can light these things appropriately and you can get the level of detail that a professional can get, you can clip it out and you can essentially superimpose it wherever you want. Which essentially means you're making the investment once in a quality photo that you can possibly reuse in a few different ways. Granted, if the lighting is kind of matching the direction of what you're trying to do, but if you're just looking to take your product on white or transparent background at that point image and push it to a different color background for a certain sales campaign.

Chase Clymer :

For example, right now we're recording this, in the middle of October, so Halloween's coming up. So if this thing was originally shot in white and you want to drop it in on an orange background to be festive and spooky, that would be pretty straightforward if you had these assets provided to you by someone that knows what they're doing. Doing that with an iPhone picture and hard light from a sun, or even a big bay window, I don't think that's going to cut it. You're going to really need to have some all around lighting and understanding how glare works. So that's kind of when it gets a little more than DIY and into the more professional thing.

[12:07] From DIY to hiring pros

Chase Clymer :

So, let's kind of chat about that. Where should I be in my business either in sales or like overall growth or just size, however you want to really put this out there, when I should start thinking about making a shift from doing a DIY approach to kind of moving in to partnering with professionals, to help me with my product shots?

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. That's a really great question because I do think as a photographer there's a point where you're maybe you're not ready to hire a photographer because you're not making enough money yet. You're a newly launched business. You're not making any money yet. Your pre-money spending money on a photographer is just not the thing you need to be focusing on yet because you can get decent photos by doing it yourself, using what I like to call the window light method, but there's other ways to do it. And you can pretty much do that for free and it looks okay. And I think the idea is you want to get to market, right? You want to get to market as soon as possible and see how it goes, right?

Jeff Delacruz:

And then the second you start having some money coming in, oka, now let's hire a photographer and do the main listing image because the main listing image is your highest ROI photo. And you can worry about the secondary images later. Our business photos start at $39.99 per photo and go down with volume. So for 40 bucks, you can upgrade your main listing image on your product and then that photo will return dividends over time. And you could just do one. And then worry about the secondary listing images as you start to increase revenue. And so I really think that as a digital marketer, you really want to think of photography more as a way to increase conversion rates and click through rates in a way that's really effective.

Chase Clymer :

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Chase Clymer :

So let's say that I'm to that point and I'm like, "all right, I think I should get this shot professionally and I can come up with 40 bucks." How's it work? Do I drop it in a package and I mail it off to you, drop ship it from my store. However, my fulfillment's setup and just, I send you the product and then you send it back and then I get an awesome image. How's it work?

[14:55] How does POW work?

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. The first step is to visit the how it works page and watch the two videos on there. We've really got this dialed in. We've just hit our 15,000th order, delivered probably over 500,000 different product photos over the life of this business. And this process works. And basically what you do is you start by building a shot list with the shots that you want. Because if you just send us stuff and you're like, shoot it, you don't know what you're going to get. We don't know what to shoot for you. It could be anything. So you start by just figuring out the shots that you want by building a shot list. And I think this is true with any photographer.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah, it's true with almost anything creative. It's like, "What do you want, first of all, let's talk about the strategy first and then we can get into the implementation of it."

[15:47] Diving deep into the process

Jeff Delacruz:

Right. And when working with us, we have a shot list template basically. And the first row is photo one. What do I want in the photo? I don't know. You tell us. We want a product straight on, or we want a product with the cap off on its side with like a whip coming out. Or we want the product overhead with some powder coming off the side. The options are endless. And I think it really starts even before that point, just going online and just seeing what's out there. Building a Pinterest mood board of just all the photos that you want your photos to look like, or just a folder, or just screenshotting things, or just Instagram folders, collections and stuff. Just things that you love that you're like, "Man, I really wish that my photos could look this good."

Jeff Delacruz:

Then you can reference that in your shot list. And you can say, "Make it look like this or make it light it like this," because we actually have the ability to light things at a custom level, as well as cause we're not just putting this in a light [inaudible 00:16:56], taking a shot. Our sets are really sophisticated. We can actually look at a photo and say, "Oh, this was lit with two highlights on the side. How do we set that up?" So there's two highlights there just like you requested.

Jeff Delacruz:

And then to continue with the how it works. So, you know what you want, you put together your shot list. We make it as easy as just placing the order online. But we have a team of customer service people that you can send your stuff to. And we'll work with you to figure that out. Then you send us your stuff and we shoot it within seven business days or less. Turn it around. If you have some revisions, we can make some changes, but if you're happy, then you just download them and upload them to your website.

Chase Clymer :

And it's as easy as that. Are you sending the products back or how's that work?

Jeff Delacruz:

So if you spend over 75 bucks, you get free return shipping. Since we don't know what you're shipping us, we can't offer free shipping to us because you can send us anvil and we don't want to pay for that. But most of the time, most people qualify for free return shipping and we just sent it back at the end of the order, basically.

[17:52] It’s either time or money

Chase Clymer :

Absolutely. So you're not even losing out on the cost of the product. You're just getting some awesome assets. And honestly, at the end of the day, it's one of those things. It's like it's time or money. They got to a proven process. You could hire someone and just get it done. It's out of sight out of mind. You know, Jeff and his team will knock it out for you. Or you can be in the weeds of your company coming up with this process, yourself, investing in a studio or studio equipment that you have to set up and tear down.

Chase Clymer :

Going back to me talking about when I was over at Homage, helping Sean take product shots, I'd have to lug over three giant lights and set up all my pocket wizards and sync that stuff. And then I'd realize I left my flashcard in my car or something, it was just a whole thing. It'd take us like an hour or two just to get set up. Then I'd have to remember how we lit the last shots. And it is just kind of, it's definitely a painstaking process to do it yourself. And I think there's value in hiring someone like Jeff and his team to just get that stuff done. Within seven days is also an insanely good turnaround time.

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. The equipment we have, you would have to spend at least $10,000 just to get set up and then it's going to take more than just watching a couple YouTube videos in order to figure out how to use the equipment.

Chase Clymer :

Oh, yeah.

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. All our photographers have college degrees from photography schools, they're very technically focused and they're really good. They're really good at what they do.

[19:21] The value of expertise

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. That's something that people don't realize is you can go out and buy a $5,000 camera and I guarantee your pictures will look like crap compared to something I shoot on my iPhone because I understand composition and I understand how lighting works and I understand how to utilize the tool in my hand because I studied the art of photography, not like an iPhone. I went to school for it, too.

Chase Clymer :

And I guarantee that everyone on your team is the same as well. Shooting glass is the most difficult thing in the world. So if anyone out there has glass products, I'm sure that you are just hating life whenever it comes to trying to get a decent product shot with something transparent like a pint glass, it's almost impossible unless you know what you're doing.

Jeff Delacruz:

What's really funny though, is I talk to a lot of customers before they place their orders and sometimes there's always this workflow where people, they start off, they try shooting it themselves and it just doesn't look great. And especially with glass products, like you're saying this is why I'm bringing this up. And then they're like, "I tried to shoot it. I got this light tent, I got this thing on Amazon and I shot it and it just doesn't look that great. And I just can't figure it out. And that's why I'm calling you." And they just sound so like defeated and sheepish that they have to call me.

Chase Clymer :

Look what it is, it's the metallic or glass, anything that's shiny, that's going to reflect or refract the light is just a nightmare unless you know how to deal with it.

[20:03] Apple marketing vs lighting

Jeff Delacruz:

Well, and I think it's also just everything in the world is telling us that we should be able to take our new iPhone and photograph an ad campaign with it.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. Well, that's what Apple's trying to sell you is this insane thing. But they also, aren't talking about, it might have been shot on an iPhone, but it was not lit by an iPhone. That's not natural light.

Jeff Delacruz:

Right, right. It's got this whole rig around it too, or something like that that's really complicated.

Chase Clymer :

To take away, go behind the veil or the curtain or whatever is photography comes down to lighting. It's all about the lighting. The camera is one thing, but it's actually the glass on the camera. The lens directly affects how the light works in the sensor of the camera as well. So lens has just as much to do with the lighting as the actual lights do. So understanding how aperture works on a lens and understanding how to light a product, especially a tricky product, a transparent or metal, anything like that, that's skill that you got to pick up. And it's something that you're going to have a hard time doing with some YouTube videos and an iPhone.

[21:45] POW’s multi capture compositing

Jeff Delacruz:

And Chase you might kind of get a kick out of this. We're doing some things that are a little bit more advanced than other catalog studios are doing too. We're doing, what's called multi capture compositing. So we'll set the product down on the set, we'll light the product, and then we'll have this really ugly reflection on top. So we'll take another shot without moving anything, but we'll put a flag or something dark on top to kind of get rid of that ugly reflection. And then we'll take those two images, we'll export them into Photoshop and combine them together and paint in the section that we want and eliminate the other section. So each image could be more than one or two images, maybe up to five images of different multi-capture composites to create one image.

Jeff Delacruz:

So, I think that's an advanced level. That's something that we're doing that I don't know any other catalog studio that's doing that and it keeps our shock counts really low. So I would say bigger catalog studios are shooting 70 to a hundred shots a day, because they're just using the same lighting a lot and they're just flopping and dropping and getting through it. And that's fine, I guess if you're working with one company, but since we're working with a hundred companies a day, all with different lighting specs, you have to be able to move in and out of these different lighting scenarios really quickly. So every shot is custom is what I'm coming down to.

Chase Clymer :

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[23:52] Chase’s funny photo experience

Chase Clymer :

I got into this in music and in photography is like it that's kind of where my world started. And I did some album covers, not album covers, sorry, magazine covers for some music magazines. And I did a composite cover of this band and they were all shot in a studio, same lighting on every character. And I put them into a band formation because it was easier to do that because I was also manipulating the background and the foreground making this cool thing I had in my head. Now what was funny was within three months they had kicked a member out of the band and just decided to move on without him and I just redid the photo for them.

Jeff Delacruz:

You just press delete on that layer and that dude's gone.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. Let's move some people around and then we're like, "Hey, that's sweet."

Jeff Delacruz:

That's great.

Chase Clymer :

So is there anything I forgot to ask you that you think would be worthwhile with sharing with our audience?

[24:39] Why lifestyle photography is expensive

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. I really think that one of the big questions, I get a lot of questions that are kind of regular questions and one of them is about lifestyle photography. And I really feel like there's just kind of this thing where everybody is telling you to get lifestyle photography for your website, for your listing.

Chase Clymer :

I'm guilty of that. I do it all the time.

Jeff Delacruz:

But people aren't saying like how to get it. And that just as the photographer that people come to and say, "I want lifestyle photography," I'm here to tell you that getting lifestyle photography, true professional lifestyle photography, is expensive and almost not worth it most of the time unless you are a really big brand.

Jeff Delacruz:

So let me kind of dissect what that means here. And I know this because I was a freelance photographer in that world for many, many years before I started this business. So let's just say we're doing a letter board. And on that letter board, we want to put it on a wedding table, a wedding gift table to say like, "Yeah, congratulations Joe and Jackie" or something. And that will be, that'll be the lifestyle photo and the product is the letter board.

Jeff Delacruz:

So this is actually a really complex lifestyle shoot. Because if you imagine, first of all, there's a table and there's all this wedding stuff on the table, presents and stuff. And maybe like there's cake on the table and maybe there's just all this stuff, somebody's got to buy all that stuff. And then this has to be in some sort of scene. So we can't just bust into somebody's wedding, put the reader board down and take a photo of this. We have to like set a scene. So we might need to rent a place, for example, that looks like it could be the place for the wedding. And then if we have the models in the shot, which is Joe and Jackie themselves, we would need to hire models and the models need to wear a special set of clothing, so.

Chase Clymer :

And then you need makeup artists and then you need people to help-

Jeff Delacruz:

Hair and makeup.

Chase Clymer :

... with setting up the scene and all the lighting spec... Oh man, I used to work at a commercial portrait studio and anytime we were doing location work it was a nightmare.

Jeff Delacruz:

Right. And that's what is not being put out there. When somebody's saying, "Just go get some lifestyle photos." They're not telling you the rest of the story. And so, to put a shoot like that together is just really expensive.

Chase Clymer :

It's definitely a couple thousand bucks to go that route. At the minimum.

Jeff Delacruz:

At least $2,000 on the cheap row. Upwards of five to $10,000, depending on where you're getting these models. Are they professional models? Are they industry stylists and stuff? How much, how elaborate is this set? If you just want a photo for your Amazon listing, anything over a couple hundred bucks is just too expensive because it's just not reasonable.

[27:14] POW’s “lifestyle composites”

Jeff Delacruz:

So I do think there's a place for lifestyle stuff though. We created a service called Lifestyle Composites. And basically what you do is you just pick a stock photo, make sure that it has like a place where we can put a product into it and then you provide the product and you send it over to us and we look at it and we say, "Okay, we can do this. We can put this product in this scene." And what we're going to do is we're going to look at how that stock photo was lit and then light the product so that it has that same style of lighting and then Photoshop it into that scene so that it looks realistic. And we're doing that for 150 bucks all in, including the retouching, the photography and the stock photo. And this is a new service and our customers love it. So I just wanted to bring that up because it's a solution to something that I think a lot of people are struggling with.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. I've definitely took a look at that service earlier today when we were getting ready for the podcast. And unless you told me it was the majority of them, I could spot a few things, I'll be honest. But it was because I was looking for it. In passing, I'm probably not going to notice that those were composites. Some of them were pretty miraculous what you guys did, I was very impressed. But no, I agree that there are cheaper alternatives, especially when you're working on product market fit, getting the lifestyle photography with a model and the whole scene, screw that. Use an alternative, like you guys have. Another thing I've seen, some people do is just reach out to influencers, be like, "I'll give you free product if you give me some sweet photos," you probably have zero say in the direction of it, you get what you get. But that's another cheaper alternative as opposed to hiring a creative director to flush out an entire shoot for you.

[28:38] A time and place for every strategy

Chase Clymer :

I think there is a time and place for that stuff. And it's probably not in anywhere in the first million dollars of sales of your business so you're ever going to need to do that. When you're in that scaling stage though, assets like that do have a time and a place and they can definitely be really worthwhile if you're doing some bigger advertising and marketing campaigns with that stuff.

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. And I think they're a great solution for banner images on your website. I don't think they're great for Instagram feed images. I think you just need too much content for Instagram in order to get that many made because you need to be posting once or twice a day almost in order to get real results from your Instagram stuff. And if you're spending 150 bucks per photo, that doesn't really make any sense.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. That's not a good return on your investment.

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. And I think more utilizing this kind of window light kind of stuff or behind the scenes or just kind of DIY stuff is really good for that kind of stuff.

Jeff Delacruz:

For Instagram, that user generated content is so awesome. Just ask people for pictures of them using your products. And it might not even be professional at all, but it tells the story too. And that stuff is fantastic for Instagram. That's a perfect place for it. It's fantastic for an email newsletter as well. And some of that stuff makes there's a good argument to have some of that stuff on your product page as well to show like, "Hey, this is a real thing, it's really selling. It's really helping these people doing an X, Y and Z."

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah. Maybe it's a secondary image or something like that. Just showing it actual use maybe with a little quote at the bottom, from that influencer that you'd sent the product to just talking about why they like it. I think that's, we work with a lot of beauty products and I see that a lot just working with influencers and stuff in that way.

Chase Clymer :

So, for someone that's a little bit more DIY though, you did something cool with Shopify. Do you want to pitch that real fast? It's not really pitching it I guess, it's free.

[30:33] Jeff’s free DIY photography course

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah, this was a great experience for us, for me. They flew me out to Toronto and we did a whole one and a half hours course on using window light to photograph your own stuff. We talk a little bit about what we were talking about here about just the value of photography, but really most of the course is a down and dirty video on how to take your own product photos with a point and shoot camera or a cell phone. It talks about using window light. It talks about all the nuances of that. It talks about photographing people. You have a t-shirt company, you want to photograph a friend wearing a t-shirt, this is how you do it. It talks about retouching, how to get stuff retouched and cleaned up. It's by far the most intense and in-depth course out there on DIY product photography that I haven't seen anything like it out there. So check it out. It's free on Shopify Compass.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. Well, we'll make sure to link to it in the show notes for everybody. And there's also another amazing offer. Jeff and his team over there at Products on White Photography are offering up a free test photo for any listener. If you guys actually want to trial kind of what they're after you got anything else to add to that? I guess your stole your outro.

Jeff Delacruz:

No, I mean we want to show you that we're worth it. We want to do a free photo for you and you just compare the difference yourself. Switch that main list [inaudible 00:32:17] image out, see how it looks on your site. See if it affects conversion rates. You can do it basically for free and yeah. Try us out. And I think we'll prove that we're the best.

Chase Clymer :

Yeah. The caveat's there is you got to pay for shipping both ways or you lose the product, but you're going to get photo out of it.

Jeff Delacruz:

Yeah.

Chase Clymer :

Awesome. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'll make sure to link to Products on White Photography in the show notes. Same with the Shopify course. Thank you so much.

Jeff Delacruz:

All right. Thanks a lot, chase. It was a real pleasure talking with you.

Chase Clymer :

I cannot thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their journey and knowledge with us today. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our businesses links and more information will be available in the show notes as well. If anything in this podcast resonated with you and your business, feel free to reach out and learn more at electrici.io/connect. Also, make sure you subscribe and leave an amazing review. Thank you.

Written by Annisa Davila

Annisa Davila is the Director of Marketing At Products On White Photography. She is an expert at digital marketing, content strategy and photography production. She has a passion for beauty, cats and fashion.

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