Tips to hunt for professional photographers

Posted by Left Coast Marketing LLC on December 12th, 2018

Well taken product photographs can make the difference between clinching a sale and losing one, especially for ecommerce stores. Here are some things to consider before hiring professional product photographers in California.

1. Decide on the Overall Direction

Let’s start with the overall site layout and message that Santa Rosa Photographers can deliver. How the images taken by your Santa Rosa Photographers are going to be integrated into the overall layout? Should the photos snapped by Santa Rosa Photographers look modern, cool and functional?

If you go through Shopify’s blog, it has a nice overview of the different styles you could adopt and some examples of e-commerce sites with excellent product photography made possible by some of the most talented Santa Rosa Photographers. They can prove to be useful reference point for your site design.

2. Involve your Web Designer (if you have one)

Once the overall design has been decided, your web designer should be kept in the loop when choosing the Santa Rosa Photographers as it’s important that both of you are looking for similar qualities in the final images.

3. Pricing it Right

When trying to gauge how much the shoot from Sonoma Photographers will cost, there are a few aspects that you should keep in mind. The physical location of those Sonoma Photographers and whether the travel costs are significant would be points that need to be considered. The specified size of the project would generally determine if work is to be done on a per image or per project basis although the complexity of the photos and items to be photographed by the hired Sonoma Photographers influence this as well.

These will also influence the final cost. Generally, Sonoma Photographers retain copyright of the images and grant licences for specific uses (A simple example: Web use for a duration of 5 years). This should be negotiated depending on your needs. A Photo Editor has an excellent collection of articles aimed at Sonoma Photographers but also very useful for anyone thinking of hiring one, to illustrate the pricing and negotiation process.


4. Getting Down to Details

Relevant to this discussion is of course the specifics details of the actual shoot itself – whether models are required and how much Napa Photographers will charge (be sure that the considered Napa Photographers get the appropriate model releases), the backdrop, lighting, and a description of how the photos are to be taken by these Napa Photographers.

All of these points should be on paper to avoid conflicts later. This will also be a great idea for several test shots on a small number of products to be vetted for quality and the ‘right look’ before continuing as this would minimize costly re-shoots.

5. Post Processing Requirements

Some final issues that would need to be discussed before the shoot include the extent of post processing by the Napa Photographers. Ordinary brightness/contrast and colour balancing should be a given, but more complex editing such as masking out of backgrounds.  

Professionally taken product photographs by the best Napa Photographers can add tremendous value to your e-commerce website with minimal hassle. I hope these tips come in handy when you are trying to decide the way forward. If you need professional photographers from Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa, contact LCM at https://www.leftcoastmarketing.com/ or call 707-479 5385.