What to Consider When Selecting Backgrounds for Product Photos

This post is brought to you from Melanie of Violet's Buds. Melanie has Bachelors of Science in Photography and provides product photography advice and services to entrepreneurs.

Recently I shared about experimenting with different backgrounds alters the feeling of your product photos. Flat backgrounds allows your products to stand alone and speak for themselves. But by experimenting with depth of field and texture, you can produce images that sets your creations apart from similar products, making your items the pop from a sea of similar items in a virtual marketplace. You want to select backgrounds that complement your products, tie in with your branding, show scale, and do not distract from your product. 

Consider these things when experimenting with props and backgrounds that add texture to your product photos:  
How will your product be used?

What feeling do you wish to convey?
Does this backdrop fit with your brand?
Is it cohesive with your shop's look?
Does it distract from your product, or draw you eye towards it?
Does it make a statement?
How does it set you apart from your competitors?

Here are some excellent examples of creative backdrops that play on depth of field and texture to help inspire you:

Ella Bella Bows produced this fun image of her Yoda hair clip by positioning a repeating line of the hair clips in the background. Though there are multiples of the same item in the image, your eyes are drawn directly the the clip that is front and center due to the excellent use of depth of field, which slightly blurs the products in the background and makes the nearest item POP from the image! 

This photo from Polder's Old World Market is a stunning example of successful product photography using props and texture to demonstrate the quality of their product. They captured an image of a handmade coffee scoop sitting atop a pile of coffee beans  - it shows scale, product use, and emotes a feel for a simple, natural life. 

Something as simple as shooting a hair accessory in a model's hair rather than flat on a white background can change how people see your product and make it pop in a virtual marketplace. Experiment with depth of field and texture and see if you can come up with some fun results for your product photography!