236 – How to Take Winning Product Photos with Your Phone with Aaron Nace of PHLearn

Gift biz unwrapped,

episode 236 and here's the real key to taking great pictures

on your smartphone is just do it outside.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters,

and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is give to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Susan.

Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast.

We're entering into the holiday season where everything is shiny,

glittery, and Oh so visual.

So the topic of this show couldn't come at a better

time. We're talking about how to take pictures that present your

products in the best light possible.

Oops, Nope.

Planned pun here.

Should I rerecord this?

No, I'm just going to let it go.

So taking pictures in the best light possible and why your

photography is so important,

not just now,

but throughout the year,

whether it's your website,

promotional materials,

or even some of your Instastories.

Getting great photos and having new ones always at hand makes

life so much easier.

Best of all expensive equipment doesn't have to be part of

the equation anymore.

Making this achievable for all of us.

But before we get into the show,

I want to share with you a new section to the

show that I'm going to be including on a random basis

called the past guest spotlight.

You know,

we've had an opportunity through this podcast to learn the stories

of others in terms of how they've gotten to where they

are at the time that we do the interview,

but that's not where the story stops.

Our guests,

just like you,

continue on their journey and continue to do remarkable things.

So this new past guest spotlight is meant to share achievements

that past guests have had since our chat.

It demonstrates what I say all along.

It's a journey and step by step a business evolves.

It never just gets to one place and stays the same.

My very first past guest spotlight is on Lisa Whoa,

Jack of black bow suites.

Her show is number one 79 that aired back in September

Lisa's product was featured as the deal of the day on

the today show and with that appearance she sold over 700

gift sets in just a few hours.

I'd love for you to go back and listen to that

episode. What you'll hear is how Lisa started out and built

her business.

You'll also be reminded that she was once just starting her

business with lots of questions just like you,

and then going on to do great things.

This has meant to excite and energize you to move forward

with your plans because big things are achievable for you too.

I'll link the today show video as well as her podcast

episode to the show notes page so you'll have easy reference

to both of those.

And now let's get into how to take some awesome pictures.

Shall we Today I have the pleasure of bringing you Erin

NACE of Floren.

Aaron studied at North Carolina state university and obtained a degree

in industrial design,

graduated from college.

He thought his path was clear to one day becoming an

automotive or furniture designer.

That is until a six month long journey to South America

transformed his life forever.

It was during this time that he fell in love with

photography and its power to both facilitate and share adventures.

everybody around the world and today to all of us on

the podcast.

Welcome to gift biz on wrapped.

Aaron, Thanks so much.

So good to be here.

I am so excited we get a chance to talk about

a topic that I think challenges a lot of the listeners.

So I know this is going to be a good one,

but before we dive into all of that,

I'd like you to share with us who you are in

a bit of a creative way,

and that is through a motivational candle.

So if you were to describe your candle by color and

quote, what would it look like?

Well I guess we're going to say it's going to be

made with soy wax.

All natural.

I'm a hippie at heart here,

so love it.

And the scent would have to be as natural essential oils

too. Probably Rose cause that's one of my favorite scents in

a candle color.

Uncolored I'm just like let's keep those dyes out of there.

Let's just keep it nice and simple and pure.

And if it were to have any type of message,

I would say as creatives,

I know myself,

I'm always getting obsessed and like getting into new projects and

trying to build my creative vision and sometimes I can get

a little bit too deep into it and I need to

like take a break and relax and let myself recharge.

So I would say like a quote on the candle would

just be remember that like the downtime is just as important

as the uptime.

That's what fuels you to be creative and continue to pursue

your passions.

Perfect. Love that.

And I think you're right.

We can get so buried into,

I'm thinking for our listeners,

the making of their product and spend so much time there

and obsess it past what's necessary perhaps.

Right? Yeah.

It's like that extra two or three hours you stayed up

at night working on something.

It's like well maybe I didn't even do anything during that

time. Maybe it's just me trying to make something perfect.

Yeah. Sometimes it can be good to just take a break,

get some rest and come back with a fresh mind.

Oh my gosh,

that's a lesson for me right there.

I need to listen to you.

For sure.

All of us creatives.

Absolutely. Well we talked just a short time in the pre

chat and I was sharing with you that a lot of

the people who are listening here understand photography but I think

are afraid of it because they know pictures maybe need to

be perfect.

They don't know how.

Then they just put pictures up cause they need pictures up

if they're starting a website and all of that.

So I think direction here from you is going to be

really helpful.

But let's start with grounding.

Everybody on photography.

Why is photography important?

It might be obvious,

but let's start there.

Sure. So these days,

anything we're selling,

it probably makes good sense to have an online store,

some sort of portal where your visitors can shop remotely,

just allows you to reach more people,

allows you to be online and up for sale for 24

hours a day,

seven days a week.

So obviously years and years ago if you're doing face to

face sales,

someone can pick up your product,

they can feel it in their hands,

they can experience it themselves and make a pretty good decision

about whether that's going to work for them or not.

These days,

because so much of our business has moved to the online

platform, good photographs kind of play that role.

They allow your customer to get an idea of how that

product is going to work in their life and the quality

of those images as well as the style of those images

can play a lot into your brand as well.

If you've got like a sporty,

fun color from brand,

you can integrate those things into your photography.

If you're more like a classic minimalist,

your photography might be like a perfect white background,

like very simple,

just a product with no harsh lighting.

There's a lot of different fun things you can do with

photography to extend your brand.

Okay. And I also have always felt that even if you

have a more casual product,

for example,

the quality of the photo is so important because it kind

of indirectly talks about who you are as a business in

terms of the professionalism of your business overall.

So even if you have like a rustic casual type product,

you still want sharp,

really OnPoint images.

Yeah. You know,

it's just another tool that you can use to communicate the

quality and the energy and professionalism and the care that you

put into your entire brand.

So just as copy,

like written word is super important on any of your marketing,

your or icon is super important.

Just keeping a good consistent design flow,

making sure things aren't cluttered.

The photography plays an important role there as well.

And I think especially because we're in such a visual age,

especially now with Instagram being a huge platform,

also things like Etsy and Pinterest,

people are looking at images first and then from there they're

going to make a decision whether they want to even read

much of the copy on your website.

So it's one of those tools that you can use and

it's so impactful.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words,

right? One single photograph named make or break a product sale

for you.

And that's why it's super important to have great photos.

You don't have to spend a ton of money and like

hire professionals and things like that,

but approaching your photography with a bit of,

we're gonna help you out with this in this interview,

but with a little bit of foresight and just making sure

you can do the best job you can possibly do on

any budget will most definitely benefit you and your business.

Perfect. I think you've captured everyone's attention when you said that

it could make or break a sale and I totally agree

with you there.

So let's give him a good portion of our listeners and

even people who are already established in business.

I know have told me that they know their pictures could

be better.

So let's start from the beginning.

And I also feel like what you just said,

where it doesn't have to be hard,

it doesn't have to be intimidating because we're all thinking cameras

and lenses and all of that stuff too.

So we're going to try and keep it as simplistic and

easy and doable for all of you gift biz listeners as

we can.

So let's start right at the top.

How about that?

So Aaron,

what do you say in terms of someone who's just going

to start improving their image?

What equipment do they need in the most simplistic form you

can add on to it.

Like if you want to elevate the levels too,

you might say like beginner,

medium, and expert or wherever you want to take this as

fine for me.

Yeah. Obviously there's many different levels of every type of skill

and every type of craft.

But I would say to start with,

let's not go out and start spending money.

Let's just figure out what we can do with the equipment

we have.

So let's just say you're photographing some of your products on

your smartphone.

Most of us these days have a phone with a pretty

decent camera on it.

I probably have a friend who has a new iPhone with

a fancy camera on it so you can borrow there as

if you don't have one.

But my big,

big advice is think about light.

So cameras love light as much light as possible and the

quality of the light,

whether it's a hard light than a hard light is when

you see it a hard shadow like outline of the shadow

or a soft light where it's just kind of like a

fuzzy shadow.

Those things can play a big role in your overall brand.

So my big suggestion for people trying to take better photos

on the cheap here is first you want to choose what

type of background you're going to put your photo on.

I would say the classic classic background is just a white

background and you can just get a piece of large white

paper or like cardstock,

something like that.

An arts and crafts store.

That's a fantastic option.

Also, really nice looking.

Distressed wood is always going to be a classic option as

well, so start off by choosing your background and have that

correlate to your brand.

Are you more of this rustic lifestyle brand?

Maybe a beautiful wood background would make sense for your products

or do you want things to just be clean and minimal

than a white background might be good for you?

So start off with choosing your background.

The second thing you want to do is try to style

your products a little bit and you'll want some photos of

just the products by themselves,

but you'll also want some photos of how those products interact

with your customers and maybe how they might be displayed in

their home or if it's a clothing or a wearable.

How that's going to look on a subject.

Let's say you are going to be photographing a wearable.

Go ahead and find someone who you think would represent your

brand, make sure they're wearing clothing that would represent your brand

and then they can wear your wearable and you can photograph

them like that.

So my big advice here is come to these photos with

a little bit of preparation and that a little bit about

what you want to say with these photos.

So that's step number one and then you can totally take

great pictures on your iPhone or smartphone,

whatever you've got.

I really do believe that.

And here's the real key to taking great pictures on your

smartphone is just do it outside.

Do it outside if you can do this on like an

overcast day.

In other words,

when there's clouds in the sky and the shadows on the

ground are soft and again by soft shadows,

I mean you can't see the outline of the shadow.

It's just like almost everything like that blurs together.

So outside on an overcast day,

put your piece of white foam core on the ground,

set up your little product display on the ground and photograph

it from the top down.

Your camera loves as much light as it can get and

those photos are going to turn out great because when you

think about a big,

big, big sky on an overcast day,

that's what professional photographers refer to as a soft box.

It's basically like you have a hundred miles softbox lighting your

product, right?

You can't really get any better than that.

So outside on an overcast day,

that is a recipe for success.

Perfect. I love that.

And I'd heard that before.

I'd already been writing down.

What about outside?

So before I even said anything,

that's wonderful,

but Aaron,

you and I live in Chicago and many people like part

of the year,

they're going to be able to be outside.

Totally. What do you do when you need to take photos

in the winter and you can't bring your stuff outside in

front of a window with a lot of natural light or

is that a good second best?

Yes, most definitely.

So in front of a window with a natural light and

try to get pretty close to the window if you can.

And then the other suggestion is light bounces around.

It's one of those things where it'll just kind of keep

bouncing forever.

And how you can use this to your benefit is you've

got light coming in through your window and that's going to

light one side of your product,

right? But there's a good chance the other side of your

product is going to be too dark because you've only got

light coming from one side.

So what you want to do is just put a piece

of white paper or white foam core or even silver.

You can use aluminum foil here,

just wrapped around a piece of foam core,

something sturdy.

And what that's going to do is it's going to reflect

the light from your window and fill in the shadows on

the other side.

So believe it or not,

reflectors, simply like white pieces of foam core or pieces of

aluminum foil.

Those tricks are used by high end professional photographers all the

time to fill it in shadows.

So you can do the same thing without any budget.

So just think about you've got light coming in from one

side on the window.

You want to place your reflector or white piece of foam

core directly on the other side,

it's going to bounce some of the light back from the

window and onto your product,

filling in those shadows and giving you a more even exposure.

Oh my gosh,

that's perfect.

I've seen,

I don't know if it's just in the movies or real

life, I don't know,

but I've seen often photographers with these boards and positioning them

and all of that and it's because of the reflection like

you're saying.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be something that's like,

you don't have to do his search for photography reflectors.

Of course there are products out there that are specialized for

that, but a white tee shirt will do it.

A white bed sheet can work.

It's super simple.

You're just looking to reflect light and white does a really

good job.

If you want to reflect more light,

bring in something silver,

but aluminum foil totally does a great job.

So this is not something where you have to buy a

specialized product.

All you're trying to do is add more light and reflect

some of the existing light.

All right,

perfect. And I am thinking also at even like target or

some craft stores,

you know they have those tri-fold posters for like student displays,

things like that could probably work too.

That'd be so good.

As long as it's white,

you don't want it to be Brown because if you start

using different colors,

those colors will actually start to come into your scene as

well. So you want to choose a neutral color,

preferably white.

Okay. So one more question on light.

If we're doing the inside version then what about any lights

that we have like heaven forbid fluorescent lights,

which is what I have in my office.

Do you turn all of that off then?

So it doesn't compete with the light from the window?

Definitely turn it off.

Yeah, most definitely.

And some days are brighter than others.

Like again,

we live in Chicago,

so sometimes I look at the window and I'm like,

uh, is it night?

Like what's going on here?

You know what I mean?

Maybe you just wait a few hours,

wait till the day when you have decent amount of light

coming through those windows.

Good point.

Okay. All right,

wonderful. And I think it would make sense to plan your

photo shoot.

Like let's say you decide it's going to be a certain

day, you wait till a good time and I'm thinking you

take a few pictures,

see what they look like and then decide if you need

to wait or if they look good.

Right? A hundred percent and I also recommend keeping things consistent.

So as you come out with new products,

as you come out with new variations,

you want to make sure that your photos match from one

product to another.

So maybe just take a little snapshot of your setup.

Have a good idea of what time of day you took

those pictures,

if the lighting was soft or hard.

So when you go to take new pictures,

you can do your best to replicate your original ones and

everything should look consistent on your website.

Oh, so smart.

Yeah, it sounds so easy,

but until you say it,

you don't just don't think about it.

I guess so.

And then also I think a good place to make this

comment is right here.

Plan your photo.

Shoot. So you do a lot of photos at one time,

so when you're set up,

you just take care of as much as you possibly can.

And that way you're not continually setting up,

breaking it down,

setting up,

breaking it down,

just do as much as you can at one time.

Yeah, and if you are more of a high volume store,

sometimes it might make sense to have a little setup kind

of like permanently up.

This could be in the corner of an office or wherever

it is.

That way you can just kind of always go back to

this area and have consistency day after day.

Makes sense.

Okay. So as you start talking about the lifestyle shots,

do you have any comments about angles or how that should

actually happen so you can get the best photo possible?

So again,

I recommend doing this outside on a cloudy day if possible.

That's just going to be,

it's like all your lighting is taken care of.

What if you're a quilter?

So you want to have a quilt over a couch or

something? Oh yeah.

Beautiful. Again,

I would recommend placing that couch.

So it's going to get a lot of natural sunlight from

the windows.

So don't be afraid to move things around and set up

your scene a little bit.

If you're a quilter,

you're designing this quilt.

My mom's a quilter,

so I'm well aware of how much energy goes into making

quilts and you're putting thought into every little part of this

quilt. So use your photos as the same extension of your

creativity. Is there something distracting in the background?

Move it,

take it out of there,

move the couch so it's getting,

get a lot of natural light and then you can choose

your angles from there.

So I would say take a variety of pictures as well

from a variety of different distances.

So you'll want to make sure you take it back up

a little bit and get that quilt in the whole scene

of a living room,

like what it looks like,

folding over the couch and then get a little bit closer

and see what it looks like next to some nice pillows.

So maybe you also want to,

I have a friend of yours who is happy to be

in photos.

Have them lay on that couch and put the quilt over

them and have them sip a nice cup of cocoa and

look really cozy and make sure their clothes are ironed and

make sure they're looking their best.

And then you've got a bunch of different variations of like,

okay, I see what this quilt looks like on its own.

I also see how it's going to be used in my

home. And by the end of it,

your customer is going to have a really good idea of

how that might work in their lives.

Yeah, that makes so much sense.

And I'm also thinking then you've got just the description that

you just made,

then you have photography for your website and you also have

really good social media photos to inaction in use photos a

hundred percent way better for social media than just posting your

product, a picture of your product.

Yeah. And you can post them side by side.

That can be your float.

You could post your product on white and then a picture

of your product being used in an environment and kind of

go back and forth that too.

Yeah. And right now carousel posts are favored by the algorithms.

So to your point,

Erin, about like different photos.

If you just do a carousel post,

which means you upload the same picture into that post,

people are going to stay on your account for longer looking

at that post and it's going to spread further so more

people will see it.

So I love that idea of the same photo but just

some different angles.

Well some lifestyle and there you could then put your single

piece image to like the flat lay or something.

A hundred percent yep.

Got it.

Okay. So what else do you think is important for us

to consider in addition to our iPhone on the tech end?

We'll carry on with this discussion right after a quick word

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So if the iPhone isn't doing as good of a job

as you'd like,

there are a bunch of other options out there.

And this may not be the time to go out and

purchase a camera.

There are many,

many rental houses out there.

If you live in a larger city like we live in

Chicago, there are companies that will rent you nicer cameras.

There are also websites online.

If you just type in lens rentals or camera rentals online,

you can rent some really beautiful cameras and lenses for as

little as maybe 20 or $30 a day.

So this isn't the time when you have to go out

and start taking these pictures.

There's a good chance that someone in your life,

if you're not familiar with how to use these cameras,

there's a good chance that someone in your life already is

familiar and maybe they can give you like a little crash

course to be like,

okay, set it up like this.

Here's what you wanted to keep in mind and kind of

go from there.

But you don't really have to get too complex with the

technology. As your cameras get better and your lighting gets better,

really those things set you up for more consistency and higher

quality images that might display better on larger formats.

But you can take a bad photo on a really nice

camera and you can take a great photo on a smartphone.

So it's not technology that's going to make or break it.

It's what you're putting into the photograph itself.

Pay more attention to the scene that you're photographing then the

technology you're using to photograph the image.

Okay. All right,

so let's stick with,

because I think most people will be doing it themselves.

So let's stick with the iPhone just as an example,

because I think that if you have an iPhone or an

Android, I think you're right.

I mean,

I joke around with my husband who's a hobby photographer.

We'll go on vacation and lots of times my pictures from

my phone are way better than his pictures from his camera.

He gets really disappointed,

but I could have used another word but disappointed as the

way I'm going to go with it.

So let's just go with that.

Cause I think that's the most doable for everyone who's listening.

So now we get into,

we've got the photo,

what do we do now?

Do we just put it up or what happens next?

My suggestion would be to do a bit of post-processing or

a bit of editing on that photo.

So things like,

okay, let's say we photograph a product on a white background,

but there's a good chance that that white background in the

final image is not going to be pure white.

It's probably going to be light gray.

That has to do with how cameras take pictures.

A camera doesn't actually want things to be pure white because

in a camera's mind,

that's overexposed.

So taking an image of a product on a white background,

your camera's gonna still make that gray.

It's going to change the exposure to make it a little

bit more gray.

So in post production,

you want to go in there and brighten those photos up

just a bit to make sure that that background really is

pure white.

And you can do that.

I mean they're both definitely apps for your smartphone.

A big one that I suggest is called light room light

broom for desktop and mobile.

It's the same piece of software.

You can get it on your computer,

on your tablet,

on your smartphone,

and you can do wonderful edits on that piece of software.

So if you're looking for one piece of software,

Lightroom for desktop and mobile is the one that I recommend,

it's incredibly powerful and you can use it both as a

professional or just as a hobbyist.

Okay. And so when you are lightening your photos,

are you also then lightening the product So you have the

ability within your post processing piece of software to do either

you can make just the background lighter or you can make

the product lighter as well.

It really depends on how the final image comes out and

what you feel you need to do to get an accurate

representation of that product.

Okay. All right,

so that's a product specific where it's just the image.

Then what do you do with the lifestyle photos?

And I'm just thinking,

you know,

everyone's talking now about the portrait mode that you now have

on iPhones.

Not sure about Androids,

whether they have it or not.

Do you,

do I have to do anything with those photos and post

production or post photo taking?

I'm not sure what to,

how to call it.

Yeah, Yeah,

yeah. We call it post production.

So yes,

I would most definitely recommend doing some sort of adjustments.

I mean,

oftentimes maybe your shadows are a little bit too dark.

Let's say.

Take a picture of a person with the light is from

overhead and like they have dark shadows in their eyes.

That's a very common issue we see all the time.

So post production software will allow you to lighten those shadows

up. And again,

programs like Lightroom make this very simple.

There's just a slider that says shadows.

You just click and drag it to brighten up your shadows.

You can adjust the overall colors.

Maybe you want your images to be a little more vibrant.

You can adjust the sharpness of your images.

Just, I would say 30 seconds of changes in one of

these postproduction softwares like Lightroom can make a huge,

huge difference in your images.

So I personally would recommend taking all of your product photos,

all of your photos that are going to be associated with

their brand and take them through a little bit of postproduction

because it can make a big,

big difference in your images.

Okay. So with social media,

you know there are 7,000

million editing apps,

right? Then there's apps that will allow you to do text

overlays and the video stuff and all that,

and I probably have most of them on my phone and

I don't ever use them.

Oh, that's not true.

I use a couple of them,

but so Lightroom is what you suggest overall,

I'm thinking whatever someone decides to do,

they should be consistent with their methods.

Overall, to your point earlier about having all of your pictures

look similar,

right? Definitely,

yeah. The more consistent you can be in your photography,

the more your brand is going to seem consistent and you

don't necessarily want some of your photos to look like old

and some of them to look new.

Yeah. It's a representation of your product,

so you want to make sure that all of your products

look equally as good all of the time.

Right. So,

and if you were going to have them look that way,

then they all should look that way.

If that's your brand.

Most definitely,

yeah. Okay.

All right.

What do you think about the filters that people put on?

I think that they can work for like lifestyle type photos

where you're taking a picture of a friend out in a

field at sunset wearing your product or whatever.

Totally put some filters on and keep it light if you

can. When it comes to just products or photos of your

products themselves on a white background,

stay away from those filters because those will put different colors

in the highlights and the midtones and the shadows.

So it's not only going to create a misrepresentation of your

product, but you're also going to be taking that,

but you spend all this effort to photograph something on a

white background.

All of a sudden that white is turning more of like

a yellowy color with some of these filters.

So I would recommend staying away from those filters for strict

product photos.

But again,

lifestyle stuff,

just kind of like hanging out stuff.

Sure thing.

And don't forget black and white is always a classic.

So that's an easy go to.

All right.

I think at this point,

cause I have another question before I can ask that question.

I think we should talk a little bit more about flirt

and what you're all about and what you provide as a

service because that's going to lead into my next question.

Yeah, for sure.

So we teach all this stuff,

you know I'm here like use one of these post-production softwares

to do this and this,

which is very difficult Because then you say how right?

Yeah. How,

how am I going to see that?

So flirt is my company and we teach you how to

do all this stuff and it's all videos where you see

the screen recording,

you see the instructor,

everything is just follow along.

You get sample images that you can download and you can

follow along.

So you can watch a few of these videos and really

get a good idea of how to master these skills.

So we have hundreds and hundreds of free tutorials on YouTube.

That's a great place to start.

And then on our website we cater to everyone from the

amateur all the way to the high end professionals.

So we have more advanced tutorials on our website as well.

And that's part of a subscription package.

So you pay once and you get access to everything.

Okay, perfect.

Would it be possible to find out what free tutorials are?

What free YouTube videos?

Maybe just a couple represent things that we just talked about,

like the iPhone and light room or should we just Google

it when we get into YouTube?

What's the best?

You know what,

I'll send them over to you and we'll just pop in

the show notes if you don't mind and then people can

just click right there.

That would be great.

Okay. So this leads me into my next question,

which is about Photoshop on the side of one of my

other companies,

the ribbon print company,

we often will get logos or things that we need to

work with on behalf of a customer.

And so we're seeing a little bit of a need for

more Photoshop expertise.

So my question here is kind of twofold.

Do you see more of these advanced,

even if it was Photoshop elements maybe,

but do you see the need for some of this more

advanced photo editing necessary for what we're initially talking about,

which is the product photos and the stream of information we've

talked about up to this point.

Would there be a reason to pull in like a bigger

power house editing program like Photoshop for that?

So Photoshop is so powerful in the terms you can really

do just about anything that you want.

So here's the idea.

If your photo comes out,

fantastic, straight out of camera,

you really don't need to do that much to it,

right? If you're like,

dang, that's a great photo.

I'm like,

Hey, come look at this photo.

I just took like,

I can't believe I did this.

You know what I mean?

Like if it comes out like that,

then great,

but we all know that's not always the case.

Sometimes you need something a little bit different in your photo

and Photoshop is the best program out there for making those

changes and when it comes to retouching your products,

we actually just released on flirt like this was last week,

a tutorial called product retouching for e-commerce.

It is exactly this.

It's helping you get better images.

We've got B roll of us taking these pictures and the

editing from start to finish stuff like extending your backgrounds,

like what happens if you take a square crop of your

image, but then you're like,

Oh, I want to use this as a banner on the

top of my website.

We show you how to extend those backgrounds to any direction

and make them look perfect.

There's so many different wonderful things that you can do in

Photoshop that really helped your products to stand out and just

timing wise,

just happened to work out.

We just released that product.

Oh, that's so crazy.

I think you bring up a good point too that there

are times when what you've taken off of your phone and

go through,

make sure you're outside,

if you can inside with the setup that we've talked about

and then doing the post-processing through Lightroom so you have good

photos. Those could be your for your product displays,

but there might be a time when you need to up

the level of the photo.

For example,

like you're talking about your website banners.

I mean that's the first impression that anybody gets to your

website and you don't even know if they're there so you

don't have a chance to talk to them.

Everything is about the image.

So those would be good things to really spend some extra

time on.

Yeah, and as your business grows,

the need for those type of photos will continue to increase.

If you're not already sending out newsletters,

getting people on a mailing list and sending out newsletters is

a great way to engage with your audience and putting a

beautiful photo in a newsletter is a great way to get

them to click through to your website.

So it's not going to hurt your brand to have stunning

images of your products.

It's only gonna help and you can have those in your

back pocket and use them for whatever you need.

It can fill up a large amount of space and make

designing just about anything much easier.

And I think I'm all about making sure that our time

is used in the best possible way.

Once you find a system that's working,

you take this direction,

you start doing your photos like we're talking about.

And I think Aaron,

exactly what you said,

if you have an area that you can dedicate so that

it's already ready to go,

it cuts down on the time for sure.

It ensures for the most part,

consistency, et cetera.

But once you've got a system down,

then just keep going with it.

And it depends on which levels you need to go to

based on where you're going to use those photos.

So then the other thing,

and I'm specifically talking now to people who are customers who

are listening to this podcast who are part of the ribbon

print company.

When we're getting logos in or pictures that we need to

edit because we want them to look good when we're printing

on ribbon.

I hear from you guys a lot about,

I don't know how to use Photoshop or even if it's

the smaller version,

and Aaron,

you can talk to this probably more than I can in

a second,

but even if you're using elements,

which is probably an easier program for us,

it's a smaller of Photoshop overall.

Here's an opportunity and a place where you can go to

learn how to use that cause I always hear but I

don't know how to use it or it's too big.

I'm afraid.

Now through flourish you have a resource where you can learn

be it the free YouTube videos or some of their more

paid tutorials.

And let's face it,

you only need to know a few skills to get exactly

what you're needing.

So I don't want you to shy away from it because

you don't know yet.

We don't know.

That just means you need to find out where to learn.

And here you go.

Aaron. Days with Florence.

So there's that.

What would you say about Photoshop elements?

Aaron? Photoshop.

Relevance is a fantastic program and I think if it's working

for you,

continue with it Or start it Or start it.

I personally,

I would say if you're just starting out period,

I would recommend starting out with the full Photoshop program because

it can do more than Photoshop elements.

So you may run into the time with Photoshop elements when

you're like,

I just want to do something,

I can't get it done in this program.

That's when most people transitioned to the full Photoshop.

So Photoshop elements,

it's a little bit more of like,

I guess like a simplified version of the full Photoshop.

But my recommendation,

if you're like,

that sounds scary,

whatever. We have a tutorial on florin.com

that's called the beginner's guide to Photoshop.

That takes you from,

Hey, I've never opened this program all the way to wow,

I can retouch,

I can do simple composites,

I can do all this stuff that I've seen other professionals

do and it takes you through the entire process all by

video so you don't have to worry about taking these years

and years and years of learning to get to this point.

One tutorial and you're going to know Photoshop.

Wonderful. And you guys,

and you and I haven't talked about this Aaron,

but as I was talking to within your organization,

you guys are offering us a discount.

If any of our listeners are interested in purchasing any of

the products from you,

do you want to share that or should I,

You go ahead.

I just want to also mention that we're kind of like

Netflix, right?

It's a subscription,

so basically you pay your annual subscription and you get access

to all of our tutorials so you don't have to pick

and choose.

You can come in and watch product retouching for e-commerce.

Then you can move into learn about Lightroom that we talked

about earlier.

Then you can learn about Photoshop,

you get access to all of the tutorials,

all of the assets,

all the sample images,

so you can really kind of like go where your creativity

leads. You Love that because you can also learn over time.

Exactly. You can go in when you need a specific skill.

You could go in and find it and then carry on

and then come back again and find what else you need

as you go.

So Aaron,

thank you.

You've so generously given us a 20% discount on a subscription

and give biz listeners to take advantage of that.

You'll go over to their website and flourish is P H

L E a R n.com.

Yes, of course it's going to be in the show notes

and discount code is gift biz 20 altogether.

No spaces gift biz 20 again,

that'll also be in the show notes,

so okay,

Aaron, advice for someone who's listening,

optimistic, excited,

and then it's a day after they've listened to this podcast

and they're thinking about their photography.

Once again,

what is your motivational talk to them in terms of getting

started with their photography?

I would say start out with little things.

Simple, take little steps at a time.

This doesn't have to be some like huge investment of your

time or energy.

I would say even just spend a couple more minutes thinking

about what's in front of the camera.

Like I fell in love with photography when I was traveling

in South America and I was just in really amazing places.

The camera that I had was totally okay,

but it wasn't even as good as the current iPhone.

So because I was in these great places,

every picture that I took turned out great.

So pay more attention to what you're photographing.

If the thing you're photographing looks amazing to you,

then your camera is going to capture that.

So sometimes you're in beautiful places and nature just kind of

takes care of itself.

Other times you're setting things up,

but I would say spend the energy on this setup,

spend the energy on what you're looking at,

and then the camera is just the thing that's going to

capture this beautiful scene that you put together And I'm thinking,

well first off,

we all don't have to go to South America to party.

Definitely not.

But even like if you're out on the weekend with your

kids or if you're at the zoo or they're just playing

in the backyard or something,

that could be a good place to just practice.

Then you've got photos of your family,

which is awesome.

But in terms of lifestyle and interaction with the kids and

just playing around with the camera,

so it doesn't have to be the formal setup for your

business. As you start perfecting these skills,

either you can integrate it in with your life A hundred

percent and I would say if you want to take better

pictures of your family,

try to get out during sunrise or sunset because the light

is beautiful.

You can't do better than working with good light.

Again, all a camera does is capture the light that's in

front of it.

So if you've got beautiful light,

the camera's going to do a good job capturing that.

Oh my gosh,

Aaron, you are so right.

I just got back,

I was in Phoenix last week and I did a photo

shoot and at some point this is going to be on

my website,

get busy listener.

So if you're listening to this podcast later,

probably within a month or two from now,

this is right now,

what is this?

but I've taken pictures here in Chicago,

Aaron, and then we were outside.

To your point of being outside in Arizona with that sun,

we'll forget about the heat.

Right? But I saw such a difference in the quality of

the photos because of the light.

It was amazing.

It really makes such a big difference.

If you're looking outside and you're like,

it's beautiful out there.

Get out there and take some pictures.

They're going to be beautiful.

Well, Yeah,

for sure.

Okay, so what's the future of flourish do you think or

of your career overall?

Tell me what you see in the future for yourself.

So flourish is super cool in that we've been making tutorials

for over 10 years,

teaching photography,

Photoshop, Lightroom.

And what we're doing now is bringing in other creatives to

help them share their passions and share their skills with everyone

else. So we got the tutorial thing,

we've been doing it for a while now.

So it's really fun for us to take other artists and

really put them in the spotlight.

And for instance,

we've got a tutorial we released not long ago called mobile

editing with Elise slopes and she's on Instagram at slopes,

that's SW,

O, P,

E S.

And she creates these beautiful fantasy composite images all on her

iPhone. Everything she takes,

the pictures on her phone,

she's compositing,

putting these images together on her phone and she does some

beautiful stuff like making,

there's a waterfall in downtown Chicago,

some incredible,

incredible work.

So she's one of the artists we featured recently where not

only are we featuring her work,

but she shows you how to do these things from start

to finish as well.

So that's what I'm excited about.

Well, you've piqued our curiosity.

We're all going to go over and look at all of

this now for sure.

Fantastic. Thank you so much,

Aaron. I really appreciate your time here and walking through.

Even for the newbie,

I think this all sounds doable and we've also given some

tips for people who want to take it to a deeper

level, but clearly there's really no reason for us not to

have quality pictures on our website,

in our brochures,

any literature that we have,

it's achievable and not expensive.

If you already have your phone,

it's pretty much free,

so no excuses I would say.

Thank you Aaron.

Once again,

I really appreciate your time and your expertise.

Thanks so much,

Sue. Okay,

time to go outside and take some pictures and don't forget

about Aaron's generous,

20% discount.

If you want to upgrade your knowledge of Photoshop Lightroom and

edit like a pro next week we're in for some fun

with a sister team.

They've come together with separate educational backgrounds to create something really

sweet. We'll get into all of that on the next show.

Make it a great week and bye for now.

After you listened to the show.

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