Course description

Your photos do the job a shop counter does: they show buyers exactly what they're getting. This course shows you how to take clear, honest, professional-looking product photos with the phone you already have (or a camera, if you use one), in a small space and on a small budget.

It's a full course of 10 sections and 50 written lessons. You follow a potter in Cumbria as she replaces dark kitchen-table photos with a full set of bright, consistent images for her 24 listings: setting up window light and a white background, taming reflections on glossy mugs, photographing tiny earrings and a large platter, shooting lifestyle photos in her garden and preparing every image for her shop. Every lesson describes each set-up step by step, and every section has a practice pack with diagrams, a worksheet, model answers and a one-page cheat sheet.

What you'll learn

• Planning: the photos buyers need, a budget kit, phone and camera settings, and shot lists.
• Light: window light, reflectors and diffusers, LED lights, shadows and true colour.
• Backgrounds and styling: white sweeps, textured surfaces, flat lays, props, angles and showing scale honestly.
• Tricky products: jewellery, shiny and reflective items, textiles, large items, glass and very dark or white products.
• Lifestyle and video: photos in use, hand models and permissions, shooting outdoors and short product videos.
• Editing and preparing: accurate, consistent editing, image sizes and shapes, file names, alt text and backups.
• Selling: measuring which photos work, social media and website images, reshoot plans and briefing a photographer.

Who it's for

Makers, small shop owners and online sellers who take their own product photos. No photography experience needed. It ends with a final project where you plan, shoot, edit and prepare a complete photo set for your own products or for a practice woodcraft shop.

What will I learn?

• Plan a product shoot with a shot list covering every photo buyers need
• Use window light, reflectors and LED lights to get soft, even, true-coloured light
• Set up clean white, coloured and textured backgrounds in a small space
• Compose, style and show scale honestly so buyers know exactly what they'll get
• Photograph tricky products: jewellery, shiny and reflective items, textiles, large items and glass
• Take lifestyle photos and short videos, with the right permissions for people and places
• Edit photos accurately and consistently, then size, name and add alt text for selling online
• Measure which photos work and plan reshoots for older listings

Frequently asked questions