Get better results using these tips on how to photograph your design portfolio.
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Photographing your design work to build a portfolio can seem pretty daunting. One might imagine a closed set comprised of towering lights, assistants scurrying about, maybe someone in a beret and comically oversized sunglasses with a million dollar camera yelling at people . . . but put all that out of your mind. You can accomplish a lot of this yourself.
Using real-world mockups along with lighting and backgrounds help other people (read: hiring managers) see your designs how you envision them. Then you can build a portfolio you’re proud to share with the world.
How Do You Want It to Look?
First, you have to know how you want to display your work. Look around online, get inspired, and stay consistent. Saturate yourself with all that’s out there, then use your gut to discard everything that doesn’t apply. This will ensure your vision appropriately runs through to the presentation, which is important.
Plan your overall style in a way you can repeat. This means deciding on a style you can realistically accomplish. Think about your materials, space, equipment, and time.
Some current looks and approaches to consider can include the following:
- Startup brand — solid, neutral-colored background.
- Hard flat shadows — a general style that you can apply to any design.
- Flat lay — styling method using symmetry and position.
- Vintage/grainy — a perennial favorite seeing a comeback (see Bon Appétit magazine covers).
- Flat neutrals — letting the design sell itself with a controlled background.
Don’t be afraid to apply a new approach that isn’t super mainstream. Just remember to use an appropriate presentation style and be consistent.
Things You’ll Need
Set Supplies
Here’s what you’ll need to stage your photos:
- Backgrounds — Paper and boards, colored or plain, used to stage your pieces.
- Supports — Objects that can hold up your pieces, such as a binder clip to prop up a business card, creating depth and shadow.
- Props — Anything that adds vibe to your shoot. Vases, plants, knick-knacks. Whatever brand-relevant stuff you can use.
Lighting and Gear
- Lights — If you have access to studio lights, go nuts. You’ll have more control and more overall light to work with. However, you can get great results by augmenting either overhead indoor light or natural light from windows with the items above.
- Diffusers — These are semi-transparent materials that help spread light for a softer and more uniform coverage. White parchment paper (baking section at the grocery store) and shower curtain liners are two extremely low-cost diffusion options.
- Reflectors — These help to fill in shadows and boost scenes when extra light sources aren’t available. Cheap poster board and presentation boards are excellent for this. There are also many affordable reflective discs for photography online, so if you have a few bucks that’s an option.
- Tripod — Since we’re doing still photography, a tripod is a really, really, great idea when light amounts are low. Simply holding the camera still can mean the difference between shaky, dim, pixelated photos and clear, crisp, usable photos. A tripod lets you use a smaller aperture and longer shutter speed, meaning better results. Get a cheap one, or set the camera on a stationary object that allows you to release the shutter without disturbing it.
Camera
Don’t get bogged down in cameras; use what you have. If you can borrow one, ask how to set it up to take still photos and go to work. If all you have is a phone, so be it. If you have enough light, and something to set it on for stability, most phone cameras made within the last few years are just fine.
Granted, a phone camera still doesn’t match the performance and control of a camera with a larger lens and sensor, but if it’s all you have, the tips here will help you use it to its fullest potential.
Location and Setup
The most important asset is light. If you have a bunch of lamps and flashlights, cool. It’s even better if you can set up near a window to take advantage of natural light, using the lamps to augment it.
As long as you can carve out an area to stage and light your designs, the clutter beyond it doesn’t matter. So don’t worry about being cramped or having a bunch of room. The space necessary for staging can be smaller than you might think.
Styling Tips
Back to your inspiration-hunting and subsequent creative direction: here’s where you’ll put it into action. If you have different looks for each piece or brand collection, that’s cool. You can do it all in the same look, too. Whichever you choose, that pre-planning will go a long way toward simplifying the shoot.
Here are some common types of portfolio pieces and some options for presenting them.
Fun with Props and Packaging
You can have the most fun styling a packaging shoot, so let’s start here. Since packaging exists in 3D, you can take advantage of the extra angles by changing perspective, lighting, and props to augment them.
To prepare, simply print your label designs, affix them to the preferred container with spray adhesive, and arrange the setting in a pleasing way. Adding props that relate to the brand or design is the key to style.
Here, a desert boho-inspired design is augmented with a clay pot featuring a southwestern motif, along with a eucalyptus sprig signifying the natural ingredients used in the product. Not only do these props support the design and brand vibe, they add organic beauty to the static containers.
Backgrounds
You can curve a background of poster board or similar thick-stock paper to create an “infinity” look. That mean there are no hard corners and the subject seems to sit on an infinite plane. This works wonders to showcase shadows without worrying about accurate seams where materials meet.
Simply lay the sheet of paper on the horizontal staging surface, then up the back wall. Tape it down in case your product design or props aren’t heavy enough to keep it from sliding down. Light from the front or a bit offset to allow the shadows to hug the curve for added visual interest.
Lighting
The more light sources you can get your hands on, the better. But sometimes you just need some regular overhead light with one strong directional light to get cool results. Here are some tips for different ways to use light.
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Using a strong lamp with a shade that you can point at the subject can help you create hard shadows for a modern look. Even with another light filling the scene, directional light will give you extra dimension with a graphic, almost-illustrative, style.
Magazines and Print Pieces
You can use the same overall approach for flat or semi-flat printed pieces as you did with in-the-round sets for packaging, . Don’t just present a magazine ad or poster in a flat digital space — print it and slip it in a real magazine. You’ll be surprised how much better it looks.
You can experiment with the lighting you used in other pieces, too. Use the focused directional lighting to increase the depth of the magazine, thus lifting your feature or ad closer to the viewer.
Letterhead, Business Cards, Flat Stock
Photographing flat pieces, like letterhead and business cards, that will remain flat doesn’t mean just setting it on a table and snapping a photo. Stack and lift them off of each other to showcase their individual layouts in a group shot.
Bonus Tips
Keep things clean and dust-free with a microfiber cloth. This minor additional step will help keep your images free of distracting specks of dust you may not see while you’re working. While it’s possible to retouch your photos using the Healing Brush in Photoshop, it’s much easier to just work clean.
Continuity and Consistency. To reiterate, pre-planning your creative direction will do wonders for your shoot. Also be aware of techniques or procedures you discover along the way. Take notes to keep lighting, angles, and camera settings consistent. That way, if you have to break down and set up again, your images will look the same.
Use shallow depth of field to show details and textures. If your camera or phone has manual settings, use a wider aperture to focus on certain areas of your pieces.
For instance, in the letterhead layout, shooting at a lower angle, with a wider aperture, and focusing on certain parts of the layout features a smaller area of the total field of view. This highlights certain parts, and you can provide several of these varied focal points instead of a single layout.
In packaging, you can subtly highlight one product in a group shot. Setting items apart by proximity to the camera lets you focus on a single small place on the depth plane.
In a solo shot, you can highlight specific parts of the packaging or label design. These detail shots help showcase your attention to detail, which is a valuable skill you don’t want overlooked.
Use all these tips in combination with unexpected angles. This allows the viewer to see all the sides and featured details when they can’t physically hold your designs.
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Digital Mockups
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If you can’t print on things like a T-shirt or tote bag, use photography with some digital mockup techniques to fake it. There is no shame in using this method, and you can see it on professional brands if you know what to look for. You can explore digital mockup techniques in detail here, but see below for an overview.
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Add your logo to things that you can’t print on for custom branded “merch,” even within your portfolio photos. You can do this in Photoshop by placing the artwork as a Smart Object. Using a Blend Mode like Overlay can let some detail from the photo show through a light-colored logo. If it’s a dark logo, use Multiply or Darken.
Looking for more design tips and tricks? Check out these articles.