Phone photography for sales samples

Phone photos are good enough for sales samples, on four conditions: window light, a plain background, the full set of angles a buyer needs to see, and no colour filter. A B2B buyer (business to business, someone buying on behalf of a company) does not need advertising imagery. They need to see exactly what will arrive: the pack, the label, the product inside, its size and the carton. This piece is written for newcomers on our team, who are often handed the first photo set for a sales sample, and for buyers who want to know what to ask for.

Photos for buyers are not advertising photos

Advertising photos make people want something. Sales sample photos let people know something. The two differ at every decision:

• Advertising picks the most flattering angle. A sample set shows every angle.
• Advertising may adjust colour. A sample set keeps true colour, because the buyer will compare the photos with the goods that arrive.
• Advertising builds a scene. A sample set uses a plain background so that nothing competes with the product.

Light, background and how to hold the phone

Three small things decide most of the quality:

• Light: put the table beside a window, shoot in the morning or on an overcast day, and switch off the ceiling lights. Office lighting usually runs yellow, which makes a cacao coating look muddy and rice crackers look stale. If shadows are too deep, stand a sheet of white paper opposite the window to bounce light back.
• Background: one sheet of white or pale grey paper covering the table and curving up behind the product. No wood grain, no tablecloth.
• Holding the phone: shoot square to the product, not tilted. Lock focus and tap the product on screen to set exposure. Switch off beauty modes, and switch off HDR (the setting that merges bright and dark exposures) if the result looks artificial. Never use digital zoom. Move closer instead.

The set a buyer needs

For every product code we take eight photos, always in the same order so that buyers know where to look:

• Front of the pack, square on, filling most of the frame.
• Back of the pack, close enough to read the ingredient list, nutrition table, batch code and best-before date.
• The product out of the pack, whole.
• A cross-section or a snapped half, to show the inside.
• The product beside a ruler placed right against it, for scale.
• The retail unit if there is one, such as a box holding several bars.
• A carton packed full, lid open, showing how the units are arranged.
• The outside of the carton with its label and barcode.

Name the files by one fixed convention: product code, photo number, what the photo shows. A buyer who receives forty files called IMG has to write back, and every question costs a day of waiting.

A request from a rice cracker buyer

A distributor recently enquired about Let's PLAY seaweed rice crackers and, after seeing the first photo set, sent back two questions: how thick is the cracker, and how much seaweed is on it. The first set had the front, the back and the cracker on paper, but all shot from above, so the thickness was invisible, and the ceiling light had blended the seaweed into the colour of the cracker.

A newcomer on the team reshot in one morning. Three photos were added: the cracker standing on its edge beside a ruler to show thickness, a cracker snapped in half to show the puffed interior, and a close-up of the surface in window light, square on, so that each flake of seaweed stood out from the cracker. No colour correction. Alongside the three photos went two lines: the measured thickness, and a description of the seaweed layer exactly as the specification states it. The buyer asked nothing further about the product and moved on to questions about the carton.

The mistakes we see most often

Newcomers tend to make the same mistakes:

• Taking one flattering angle and stopping. The buyer needs the whole set.
• Using a filter to warm the image. Goods that arrive looking different from the photos lose trust at the start.
• Forgetting the batch code and best-before date on the back. They are the first two things a buyer looks for.
• Photographing an empty carton. The carton must be packed full to show the arrangement and the fit.
• Sending photos through a messaging app that compresses them. Share the original files through a shared folder.

A sales sample photo set does not need to be beautiful. It needs to be accurate, complete and easy to find. That is our value Speak Honestly, expressed in pictures.

If you would like to start with concrete tasks like this in a small team, have a look at our Careers page. If you are a buyer who needs the full photo set for a product code, get in touch and we will share the folder within the working day.