Building a shot list you can repeat every week

Most sellers photograph products the way they answer email: reactively, one at a time, whenever something needs doing. That is why it always takes longer than expected.

A shot list is the fix, and it is unglamorous enough that almost nobody makes one.

What a shot list is

A written specification of every photograph a product needs, before you touch a camera. For a typical marketplace listing that is usually six to eight images:

1. Main, product alone, pure white, filling about 85% of the frame.
2. Angle, three-quarter view showing depth.
3. Back or reverse: the side the main image does not show.
4. Scale: the product with something that gives size, or in a hand.
5. Detail: the material, stitching, finish, or whatever justifies the price.
6. In use: the product doing its job.
7. What is in the box, everything the buyer receives, laid out.
8. Infographic, dimensions or key specs over an image.

Not every product needs all eight. But deciding which it needs takes two minutes at a desk and twenty minutes standing over a sweep wondering what else to take.

Why it saves so much time

Setup changes are the expensive part. Photographing eleven products from the front, then eleven from three-quarters, then eleven details, means three setups. Photographing each product's eight shots one at a time means eleven setups.

Batch by setup, not by product. It is the single largest time saving available and it costs nothing.

Decisions are slow when you are holding a camera. Deciding on the shot list at a desk is fast. Deciding while a product is on the sweep and lights are on is slow, and the results are less consistent because you decide differently at 5pm than at 10am.

Missing shots are expensive. A shot you did not take is discovered when you build the listing, by which time the setup is packed away and the reshoot costs thirty minutes rather than three.

A template worth stealing

For each product, one row:

Print it. Tick as you go. The ticking matters more than it sounds. It is what stops you finishing a session unsure whether product seven got its detail shot.

Run the session in setup order

1. Every main shot for every product, in one pass on the white sweep. Same camera position, same lights, no changes.
2. Every angle shot, having rotated the products but not moved anything else.
3. Every detail shot, moving the camera closer once.
4. Lifestyle and in-use, which usually needs a different setup entirely and is best kept last since it is the least standardised.

Products go in and out; the setup does not move. Forty products through one setup is genuinely quick.

Naming as you shoot

Decide the naming convention before the session and apply it immediately: SKU-1.jpg, SKU-2.jpg and so on, in shot-list order.

The alternative is a folder of IMG_4821 through IMG_4906 and an afternoon working out which is which. If your camera can set a filename prefix, use it. If not, rename on import while you still remember.

This is also the point where a CSV mapping filenames to SKUs becomes worth the five minutes it takes to build, it turns the naming from a manual step into a lookup.

Photograph the setup itself

At the end of a session that worked, take one photograph of the whole setup and tape the floor at the tripod and light positions.

Next month's products will then match this month's, which matters more than either month being perfect. A product range that looks like a range outsells a range of individually good photographs that do not match.

What good looks like after a few rounds

A seller with a shot list, a taped floor and a naming convention can photograph twenty new products in an afternoon and have listing-ready files the same day.

The same seller without those things spends two days, and the two days are not better spent. They are spent on decisions that had already been made once.