I’ve had such amazing feedback this holiday season (from Christmas to Valentine’s Day) from friends, co-workers, and brands alike, who actually have told me they liked my photos, left sweet comments, and even featured me on their pages and I wanted to share my secrets with you because it’s taken me awhile to curate the perfect picture and I thought I might be able to give some advice, but at the very least share my secrets!

Here, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite “product” based photos and letting you know how I achieved it and what props were involved!

For starters, I always use an actual camera for product photos, instead of my iPhone, I think having a viewfinder definitely helps me compositionally. The camera I use is a Canon Rebel T3i, it is nearly 5 years old, but it does the job…for now, I sometimes borrow Darren’s Sony a6000, which also takes some great shots. Another tip, having something that inspires you, for this first shot I had seen something with orange packaging and fake snow that helped me figure out the look and feel I was going for.

The background in almost all of these photos is plain brown packaging paper from Target, simple, non-distracting from the products, and a great backdrop. For props I used gold star tinsel from Target, fake snow from Target, mini ornaments, and some oranges I had dried in the oven. This shot came to me pretty naturally since I had such a clear idea in mind, but I did try it first without the gold accents, and then decided to add them in after. Remember, take as many different photos and add as much as you want as you go because you could always end up using one of the first more simple ones, but if you go to edit only to wish you added more props it means setting up all over again.

This next one I had to set up again, the first time I tried to get these t-shirt shots I had too much going on too fast and didn’t have a simpler option, which meant reshooting the images and I am so glad I did because these ended up being some of my favorite Christmas product photos! Also, all of these were taken outside, I just feel like natural sunshine is the absolute best lighting.

Here, you can see the edge of the brown paper, see nothing fancy!

I can’t wait to take more product photos next year! In terms of getting my pictures “noticed,” I used them to write reviews on Etsy purchases, but also posted some of them to Instagram, tagging the brands used.

I also took these lovely Valentine’s day shots, which might be some of my favorite pictures ever. Here, I used a piece of marble for the background and used confetti, heart stickers, and glitter to decorate. I got these sunglasses in the city with Darren around my birthday, knowing they were perfect for some V-day pics! I even baked these cupcakes just to get the perfect shot.

Taking pictures for my blog is one of the things that keeps running a blog fun and exciting, if I don’t feel like writing, then it will be a picture day, and if I don’t feel like taking pictures, then I’ll have a writing day instead! Hoping some of these tips might help!