Photographing reference charts with the phone in your pocket

The photographs on your listings decide whether a customer believes your colour description. Most small retailers send us images that are orange, over-sharpened and hung at an angle in a room with a bay window behind them. All three are fixable in an afternoon with equipment you already own.

The setup

• A wall that faces north, or any wall on a fully overcast day. Indirect light is the only light that keeps a parchment tone neutral.
• The phone on a tripod or a stack of books, lens at the centre of the chart. Not handheld, and not at an angle.
• Both lights in the room on, plus one sheet of white foam board held just out of frame to lift the shadow side.
• A colour reference card taped to the wall beside the piece for the first frame, then removed for the final shots.

Take five frames, not one

1. Full chart, square on, filling the frame edge to edge.
2. The same view with the colour reference visible.
3. A corner close-up showing the surface texture — this is the frame that sells the piece.
4. The piece hanging in a room, from about two metres back, so scale is obvious.
5. The back, showing the hanging hardware, so the customer knows what arrives.

The editing that is worth doing

Crop to square or 4:3, correct the white balance against your reference card, and stop. Do not apply a filter, do not add vignetting and do not raise the saturation. A customer comparing your photo to the delivered piece is your best repeat buyer, and a filtered photo breaks that chain permanently.

One last thing: shoot every SKU with the same setup on the same day. A range photographed consistently reads as a professional range even when the photography itself is plainly amateur. A range photographed inconsistently reads as a clearance shelf.