How to Take Pictures of Shoes for Your Online Store

It’s incredibly important to have good product photos for an online store to succeed. You want your customers to know you’re selling high-quality products, and having a high standard of photos can help achieve this. After all, you wouldn’t want to buy something online if it looked bad!

Similarly, you don’t want your customers to be disappointed after ordering with you if the product doesn’t match up to the photos, which is why it’s critical to channel effort into producing good online product photos.

More Information

• How to Take Photos of Clothes to Sell: Want to sell clothes on your online store? Follow these steps for the best product photos

The first step to take in learning how to take pictures of shoes to sell online is to prepare the product for modeling. The shoes should be in the best condition possible before you put them in front of the camera, so keep tools on hand to clean them should they need sprucing up!

Remove any loose fibers, and consider stuffing the shoes with tissue, paper, or even items like chopsticks to increase the fullness of the structure, especially for shoes like flats or boots.

When you think about pictures of shoes online, you imagine them against a white background. This keeps the focus on the shoes which is ideal, so we recommend having at least one photo in this style.

However, lifestyle and action shots of the shoes in use are also advantageous to have so the customer can see what they look like in motion or on a person. To effectively sell shoes online, we recommend having a range of photos in the gallery for customers to look through.

You need to know how to take pictures of shoes effectively, and lighting is key if you want your products to shine in front of the lens.

Once you’ve prepped your shoes and set the scene, make sure the area is well lit to avoid unnecessary shadows. Natural light is best, but if it’s not readily available, make sure the area is bright and natural-looking! You only want to see a shadow where the shoe meets the floor, not over the shoe itself.

You’ll need to take extra measures to perfect the lighting if the shoes have any reflective material or shiny metals, so factor that in when preparing the set.

Once the area is ready, it’s time to think about taking the actual photos. You can put a lot of effort into setting the scene beforehand and making sure the shoes are photogenic, but it could prove useless if you don’t pick the right camera and lens.

We recommend using a camera instead of a phone and playing around with settings like shutter speed to find what works best for you. The shoe needs to look just as it does in reality, otherwise customers could be upset when the product arrives in person, so try to avoid any potential distortion or warping the look of the shoe with the camera set-up. Utilize automatic settings or the use of a tripod to produce clear photos in the end.

So you want to know how to take pictures of shoes for your online store? It’s all about the angles.

There are a few signature shots, used universally, that work well when taking photos of shoes. It’s important to include multiple angles to show off the shoe successfully.

Let the customers view the product as if they were in a physical store. For example, there’s the classic single shoe profile shot for a clean view from the side. With the pair, you could maneuver the shoes slightly to the side, or even take a shot from the back to focus on the heel. The more angles, the better! Don’t forget to pay attention to details too.

The photos must remain true to the real product to avoid customer disappointment. Keep it simple and sharp. You don’t need to complicate things because you want the shoe color and design to remain clear in the photo.

However, a little editing can help make the product pop on the screen, or it might even allow you to tidy up any small errors or scuffs. Consider trying photo editing software like Photoshop, or a cheaper alternative online, to take your photos to the next level.

Now that we’ve discussed how to take pictures of shoes, there are a few things you should try to avoid in the process!

You’ll want to remove any clutter or mess in the photos so that the focus remains on the shoe — as we’ve said already, a clean white background should do the trick.

Customers want to see the entire shoe, so while it’s okay to highlight any details for a few photos, you should also have enough clear shots of the shoes from focused angles.

Additionally, when taking the photos, make sure the lighting isn’t too harsh, and remember to adjust your camera set-up to ensure crisp results. Anything blurry will seem unprofessional.

Taking great photos of products is a must if you want them to seem appealing to customers. We’ve discussed the most important steps to take when figuring out how to take pictures of shoes to sell, but remember the key details.

Make sure the shoes are clean, prep the setting and lighting properly, and figure out the ideal camera set-up for good quality photos. Consider what you need to see when buying shoes for yourself online, and replicate that in your business.

You can read more tips on how to optimize your website’s images in our detailed article.