How To Take Pictures of Shoes in 10 Steps

If you sell shoes online, you know that your footwear photography will make or break your business—regardless of how stylish or comfortable your shoes look and feel in person. High-quality images can attract potential buyers who find your shoes on social media and give those already on your product page the confidence they need to convert.

Take your shoe photography to the next level with these essential tips on how to take pictures of shoes.

How to take the best pictures of shoes

1. Prepare your shoes
2. Set the scene
3. Consider lighting
4. Choose your camera
5. Choose your lens
6. Adjust camera settings
7. Diversify angles
8. Include props
9. Play with focus
10. Edit your images

When it comes to footwear images, adequate lighting, multiple angles, shooting locations, and camera settings are all integral factors in producing quality images for your online store. 

Here’s how to approach each of those factors to take pictures of shoes you plan to sell online:

1. Prepare your shoes

Before you start to photograph shoes, ensure your products are in pristine condition. Look over each pair of shoes you plan to photograph, keeping an eye out for loose threads, worn areas, and imperfections that could turn away your audience. 

Fill each shoe with crumpled paper to give it the full look it would have when someone is wearing it. If you are working with boots, place an additional cardboard tube or more tissue paper into the ankle portion so they keep their structure.

If you offer high heels or sandals, clasp each shoe’s straps and support them with clear plastic to showcase their natural shape. You can always edit out any props used to maintain the shape of your footwear in the post-production process. 

2. Set the scene

Once you’re confident your shoes are ready for a photography session, the next step is setting your scene. 

Widely used scenes for shoe photography include a clean white background, flat-lay photography, and lifestyle/action shots:

• White background. The simplest way to avoid cluttered backgrounds in your product photos is to have a white background. Try creating a solid background using a white sheet, canvas drop cloth, or premade white backdrop. 
• Flat lay. Displaying your shoes on a flat, non-reflective surface is known as flat-lay photography. Shot from directly over your subject, this is a great way to present your shoes from the angle your customers would see as they look down at their feet. 
• Lifestyle. Action and lifestyle shots give your audience a view of your footwear in a real-life context, so you might plan a photoshoot on trails for a running shoe, in the city for casual sneakers, or at a chic bar for high heels and dress shoes. 

3. Consider lighting

Lighting is a crucial element of photographing shoes. Use varying amounts of light frommultiple angles to shoot different materials, such as polished leather, suede, or canvas, as they each absorb and reflect light differently. 

There are three main types of lighting used to photograph shoes:

• Natural lighting. When shooting lifestyle photos, natural light is an effective, free resource for you to use. Get creative with the times of day you choose to take photos, as golden hour (sunset) will produce far warmer colors than the colder hues available at blue hour (dusk).
• Studio lighting. When it comes to taking pictures in a studio setting, artificial lights are essential to achieve the right illumination on your product. A three-point lighting setup (key light, fill light, and backlight) illuminates all sides of your product, helps you avoid harsh shadows, and simulates the evenness of natural light. 
• Flash. To create stylized lighting and intentional deep shadows, use flashes on your digital camera’s hot shoe (the mounting point on top of your camera) or externally on stands in your studio. As opposed to continuous studio lights, flashes light your scene only when you press your shutter button, which may take a few test shots to get right. 

4. Choose your camera

If you’re taking casual product shots for social media, smartphone photography can be a great option, depending on the quality of your phone’s camera. 

However, when you need clean, professional-looking images for your ecommerce website’s product detail pages (PDP), a DSLR or mirrorless camera will make a world of difference. These types of pro cameras have the ability to capture more information in each shot. 

Top manufacturers to purchase cameras and other photography gear from include Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, and Sony.

5. Choose your lens

When choosing a lens, make sure it is compatible with your camera body and is the right focal length for product images. Fifty-millimeter lenses boast a great all-around focal length that achieves a similar view as the human eye. That said, you can use fixed lenses anywhere from 50 millimeters to 200 millimeters, depending on the space available in your studio and the depth of field you are after. 

If you need more detailed shots, opt for a macro lens that can focus mere inches away from your subject, as you will be able to show off fabric textures, small pops of color, and branding details that may be hard to pick up with other lenses.

6. Adjust camera settings

Once you have your camera and lens, use the manual or aperture priority modes on your camera to have more control over your images. Manual mode will allow you to adjust the aperture, focus, and shutter speed for your specific needs, whereas aperture priority mode is a semi-automatic shooting option that bases all other settings on aperture selection. 

For photographing shoes, set your camera to a higher aperture of around f/8 to f/11 so that your entire product is in focus and you aren’t accidentally over-exposing your images. 

7. Diversify angles

When buying shoes online, your consumer will need to see as many angles of your footwear as possible to eliminate any guesswork for their purchase. Important angles to include in your catalog are straight-on photos, angled side shots, and top-down perspectives. Minimize the risk of your product photography having very few angles by ensuring you include at least those different angles. 

If you have time, add value with 360-degree GIFs that show all sides of your product in an interactive video format. 

To make a product GIF: 

1. Take a photo from one angle.

2. Turn your shoe slightly.

3. Take another photo. 

4. Repeat until you have photos of every angle. 

5. Take these pictures and convert them to a GIF file in Photoshop or an editing application of your choice. 

Photographing product GIFs takes a bit of practice, so don’t be discouraged if your first one isn’t perfect. 

8. Include props

This is where you can get creative and set your brand apart. Props can add color, texture, and unique shapes to your product images. Lean on your brand guidelines for inspiration and think outside the box. Are there any objects you can add to the frame to enhance the colors, textures, or unique features of the shoes? 

Have fun and experiment—you can always remove the objects or edit them out in post-production with a photo editor or AI background-remover tool like Shopify Magic. 

9. Play with focus

Most product photos require a sharp focus, but there are times when you may want to use stylized shots. 

For example, if you want to capture a close-up image of a specific detail like a logo, use soft focus to create a blurred effect everywhere but that logo. This will make small details pop and highlight textures that may have been overlooked in your more traditionally focused images. 

10. Edit your images

Once you have multiple photos of your product, import your shoe images from your camera to a post-processing software tool. Editing can help you remove backgrounds, apply filters, adjust exposure, crop, and resize your images.

Using photo editing tools to standardize the sizing, backgrounds, colors, and exposure will keep your images consistent, make each product pop, and give your product catalog a professional appearance. You can even create presets on most editing applications to quickly apply settings to a batch of images, ensuring each product page fits within your chosen style. 

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are paid editing applications used by professional photographers and enthusiasts alike, but many free online photo editing apps like Shopify’s Media Editor are more than capable of similarly assisting you in the post-production process. Each comes with its own learning curve, but with a bit of practice, you can produce high-quality images for your online store.