eCommerce Photography Career: Salary, Skills & How Products Sell Online

You need to practice.
And as you practice and you practice, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, your style is just gonna develop organically.
And that's what you want a brand to value the most when they hire you.
Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make?
The podcast all about jobs and careers.
I'm your host, Miravozeri.
Ever wonder why some products photo make you stop scrolling and buy?
Today we're talking e-commerce photography with Julie Benedetto, who's been dreaming about it since she saw a JCPenney catalog as a kid.
Now she photographs everything from wine bottles to jewelry and she even takes royalties instead of paychecks on some of the shoots.
Let's get into it.
First of all, thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, definitely.
I was thinking yesterday, e-commerce is what we look at more than anything as far as photography.
Oh yeah.
First tell us what is it that you do in the e-commerce space?
A lot of what I do with brands is sometimes it's hand holding for smaller companies who don't know so who don't know how to break into it, right?
And they they've tried things, it doesn't work, they bought equipment, it doesn't work.
Whatever they're doing, it's just it's they've kind of plateaued in their selling.
So I help them make images that speak to their already existing audience or audience that they're trying to target.
So is it your decision whether to shoot it on location with models or just doing a product chart?
All comes down to money, always.
If a client says to me they have endless budget, then I start developing art direction and an advertising campaign that is really gonna kind of blow it out of the park and produce content and create images and video that people it won't be possible for people to ignore because it'll have that much impact.
So you're like an ed agency in a way, right?
I very much am, yeah.
Because I saw that you have other services.
Yes.
So tell me about the other services.
It came out of demand.
Clients really ask for it, especially with the companies that are just starting up.
They don't have a quarter million marketing budget.
They need to start somewhere.
I'm very much capable of producing art direction and developing a look for a brand just to get them started and get them seen.
How did you get your first client?
Commercial client or client in high school?
What do you mean client in high school?
I photographed some kids' party in high school.
But so you started at a very young age as a photographer?
I started, I think it was in tenth grade I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
So you knew you wanted to be a photographer?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
And I knew I wanted to make money doing it.
And did you know what kind of photography you wanted to do?
I remember looking through JCPenney catalog and going, I want to do that.
That's all I knew.
Yeah.
Wow.
What kind of education and studying did you have to do to get to this position?
I started at WCC.
I went there for three years, and then I transferred to Westchester Community College.
Okay.
Fantastic college.
Okay.
And they have professors that are working professionals and really know their industry.
They had a fine art degree, so I went for that.
And I had one photography class where the professor took us on a field trip, and he took us down to New York City, and we went into a real photo studio.
And I walked in and I'm like, oh my god, this is what I've been looking for.
I didn't know where it was or how it existed, but also understand it's the late 90s.
The internet was existed, but it was really hard to do research.
So was that a light bulb moment when you walked into the studio?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, complete light bulb moment.
And I just was never the same afterwards.
I'm like, I gotta get into one of those studios.
Then I moved down to New York City and I went to School of Visual Arts.
I picked that school because I had a couple of people recommending it.
Very quickly, I realized I'm at the wrong college.
This is not a commercial school.
So, what did you do?
I got a degree and wasn't finding work.
I wanted to get into this guy's studio, and he was the only person I knew.
And so I just was a pest.
I like but first I started with just emailing him my resume, and then it was okay, he's ignoring me.
Let me try calling him.
And then finally one day I said to him, Listen, I'm coming in for an interview.
And he was like, Okay.
And he let me in the door, and he saw my work, and he saw that I was really serious about wanting to do product and still life and food.
And he says, Okay, you can work here.
Wow.
And you worked for him?
I worked for him for about a year, and then I started freelancing.
Who was your first client?
My first job was shooting for restaurants.
Oh.
So I was able to build somewhat of a portfolio shooting for venues.
I was able to build a portfolio from there.
But those are your lower ticket it, those clients don't have big budgets.
So I was able to build a portfolio that way, and then I was able to apply to a full-time position.
With another studio?
With a company that needed a full-time photographer.
And how long did you stay there?
I was there for about a year.
Oh yeah.
Everything is a year.
After a year, you get antsy.
I do.
So when did you open your own studio?
You have a very nice studio.
So I was with that company for a year.
I left to go to another company.
After being there for about three months, they fired me.
Probably the best thing that happened to you.
Yes, it was the best thing that happened to me because I was like, you know what, I'll just go freelance because I have enough potential at this point.
So at what point did you realize once you start freelancing, I really need to get a studio?
It would either be the numbers are telling you that you need a space to work in.
What do you mean by the numbers?
For instance, my I think my first real break of doing what I'm doing, I got a call from Wine Enthusiasts magazine.
They said, something didn't work out with another photographer.
Can you shoot the cover?
And I'm like, are you kidding me?
Okay, so when do you guys want to shoot it?
Oh, in five days.
And I'm thinking, oh my god, like how am I gonna be prepared for this job?
And I didn't have a studio, and I reached out to another business owner who I knew had a little bit of commercial space they can kind of squeeze me into.
And I said, Can I rent that space for the day because we have this huge project?
And they said yes.
Glass bottles.
I know it's not easy to light buttons.
Yeah, it's one of the hardest things.
Did you have any experience with that before?
I knew how to oh yeah, because I was an assistant for way too long.
I was an assistant for 15 years.
And you shot glass there?
I worked for other photographers who taught me different techniques to shoot everything and anything in the world.
Okay.
Whether it was the way you light skin tone is completely different than the way you light a rug or something that's highly reflective, like a wine bottle.
Do you shoot jewelry?
Jewelry would be you seems to be really hard.
Jewelry is very similar.
I shoot jewelry, yes.
You do?
Yeah.
What kind of companies come to you now?
Are the Etsy sellers, Amazon?
Because now it's all digital.
I work for anybody and anybody, everybody and anybody that sells a product, and it's mostly online.
So I saw on your website that you offer a 360 of a product.
Are more people asking for 360 view?
The demand is actually coming from the consumer.
So the consumer wants to see a lot of images, a lot of content.
They want to see a 360, they want to see a video of the product, they want to see still images, so they need to see the product on white as well as in a lifestyle being used, and it should evoke some type of emotion in you to say, I want to buy this product.
So the demand is coming from the consumer.
Interesting.
So the 360, do you have to shoot it from all four sides or you just feed the product to the computer and it does it?
So the 360 is the product is being actually put on a machine.
And the machine has a motor and it spins.
And it's it you can control the speed, so you can have it spin very slow or you can have it spin very fast.
But when you when I look at it, it doesn't look like a video.
It looks like a still that I can manipulate.
That's because of it has to be converted to an MP4.
Okay, so it's another question that I have.
How much time do you spend on actually shooting something?
Or editing, converting, file size because every website is a different size now?
You do a lot of social media stuff also, right?
Yeah, I do a lot of social media.
So how much time do you spend actually photographing versus all the retouching, the editing, the file sizes and all of that?
I'll give you sort of I'll give you a mock project.
Okay.
So one of my clients, they're plate company.
Okay.
And every season they come out with new designs.
So they come out with a new design and say, this is what we're showing this year.
And from that, from just the artwork on the product, I have to develop art direction.
And then I get approval from them that they like the art direction.
And when I say art direction, it's how the set is roughly going to look.
So when you say set of dishes, there's a lot of dishes.
Yes.
Do you do you shoot every single dish?
Yes.
So how many shots can you get in a day?
So if we're shooting a large collection, which is about 25 different items in a collection, then we're shooting one collection a day.
So we're doing the main shot, they call it the feature.
So we're shooting the feature, we're shooting a version of that square for e-comm.
Then we're going in and we're shooting each individual item twice.
We're showing the product at two different angles.
What kind of requests do you get from clients that you didn't get five years ago or ten years ago?
The big change is the amount of volume that clients need because they can never have enough content of their products because they have to keep up with social media and all the platforms that they sell on.
Good for you.
Yeah.
I'm still in business.
So when you go on a shoot, how many people usually are with you?
You they have the lighting director or you light it?
I do everything.
I do the lighting and my assistants are there to help me move equipment around.
Sometimes I hire a digital tech to just work the computer and handle the files.
But I'm doing everything from start to finish.
So I'm sourcing props, background, surfaces, and then building the sets and then putting the product in the sets and doing lighting.
There's a lot of pre-production.
Yes.
There's a lot of pre-production.
So go back to your question in the US earlier: how much time do I actually spend taking the picture?
Sometimes I would say taking the picture is only 15 to 20% of the whole thing that needs to happen because, like you said, in the end we have to do all the editing as well.
So we have if it's shots on white, we have to send those out to get clipped.
What do you mean clipped?
When you shoot a product on a white background, then you have to clip the product out of the image.
Oh, okay.
You can't just do it on your computer or your phone or it's too time consuming.
Okay.
And I have people overseas that do it faster and cheaper.
Okay.
It's smart.
So if anybody's still clipping their images by by hand, scratch that.
Scratch that.
There's more efficient ways to do it.
I'm all about I'm all about efficiency.
And I do incorporate AI into what I do.
In what way?
Sometimes it's an assistant in the production aspect of it.
And then sometimes I'm using it because it's just too expensive to go on location and shoot.
So then we're shooting the product here in the studio and we're using an AI background.
Okay.
That's the elephant in the room, the AI.
Can it kill your job eventually?
I'm still in business.
But do you have it as the potential?
People sh still work with me because they need volume.
They have a lot of products or they need a lot of images.
And sometimes it's most of the time it's both.
They need a lot of content.
And if you're going to have somebody sit there and man the computer and have the AI generate these images, you might as well just go and shoot it.
It takes time, yeah.
Because it takes so much time to get these product images to look correct and accurate that it's not worth the manpower.
And it's going to look better if we just shoot it in the end.
The other thing I think brands need to be very cautious of with AI is the images that they're putting out there aren't actual images of your product.
So you better be sure that what you're showing is really accurate because right now there's a lawsuit taking place where there's a big brand being sued because of misrepresentation.
False advertisement.
Yes, false advertising.
So I s, you know, I'm keeping a close eye on this lawsuit right now to see if AI will be taken out of the picture in terms of being able to use it to show product because that's not the product that you're selling.
That's a computer-generated image.
Very well could be a not an accurate representation of what you're selling.
Give me some idea for your pricing.
On my website, I have some baseline pricing.
Yeah, the baseline, right?
Baseline pricing for brands just get familiar with what things are gonna cost.
And then there's different price tiers, there's volume discounts, items.
Yes, of course.
Of course.
But the basic.
What would be the basic?
If somebody comes to you, I have 10 items, I want you to shoot my 10 items.
No R directions at the moment, just straight shooting.
There's pricing on the website if you just need shots on white, and those are pretty straightforward.
And then I have prices for lifestyle images that start at 250.
I saw on your website something that I didn't understand what it is, which is 3D rendering.
Yes.
What is that?
We use 3D rendering a lot of the time for companies that don't have their packaging rebranding completed yet.
So they're still in the development process, they're designing the new packaging, they're having it printed, and that process sometimes takes three to six months.
But in the meantime, they need to sell it.
So how do they sell it?
They need some type of rendering or 3D images to get it in front of people.
So you use some sort of a software that does it.
Yes.
So I will I'm interested to know what kind of studying and development and changing did you have to do over the years from going from film shooting products to 3D rendering to all this new world.
It seems like constant change.
I will disclose that sometimes it's people on my team that are doing it.
Okay.
I think it's really important for creatives to understand that if you're gonna be successful in this world, you need to form a team.
And people that you work with and they can offer services that you don't offer because to think that you can do everything is just like it's impossible.
Clients are asking you to wear more than one hat.
What do you mean?
What?
It's not just photography, it's everything before and after for them.
So do they have a website?
Do they need a website?
Can you build a website?
So Do you do that too?
I have people that do it.
I have people on my team that do it.
Yeah, if a client needs it.
Because most of the time when a brand is just starting out, they need their social media developed, they need a website built, sometimes it's Shopify, they need the content that goes along with it, and then they need SEO, and then they need marketing.
So what I started doing in the last couple years, because I've had a lot of brands come to me where they're just starting out and they don't have huge budgets.
If it's a product that I really believe in and I see they have solid potential, I've offered them a chance to develop a long-lasting partnership where I'm investing in their company.
Oh.
And with that, it doesn't cost them much to produce content.
And you'll get royalties from sales.
And I'm getting royalties from the company.
Wow, that's a great business model.
It's a great business model for me, but for them, for the long run, it is tremendous because their brand will never stop growing, whereas my royalties maybe end in six months or a year.
It depends on many things, but I'll give you a for instance.
There was a company that approached me a few years ago and they needed content.
They had a very small budget, but I saw the potential of this product, and we worked out a contract where I would benefit from this advertising campaign just strictly based on royalties.
And we paid for you.
Oh yeah.
Can you tell us the product?
No, it's a secret.
Oh.
I signed an NDA.
Oh, okay.
Is it out already?
Yeah, the product is out.
It's doing tremendous.
It's selling.
The images, the content look great.
They're really happy.
We're gonna work together again in the future.
The relationship is it's established.
I didn't know that there's this opportunity in e-commerce of royalties.
Yeah, it's a new thing that's happening because you think about it, a lot of companies don't have a quarter million dollar budget for advertising.
There are some industries, especially CPG.
What is CPG?
Consumer packaging goods.
It's extremely competitive and they need to get recognition on the shelf.
So how do they do that?
They need content, they need photography, they need marketing, they need so many different things that it wouldn't be possible without this sort of business model where you have somebody invested into the company to produce content for you so you can get ahead, so you can start to look different from the people you're competing against.
So usually you said usually six months or twelve months, your royalty will stop.
Is that's the longest you can have in a contract for royalties?
If they want to make me 2% partner forever, I'll take it.
But what's the standard?
Is it uh six months royalties, 12 months?
Because once you take the pictures, it still takes a while before it gets onto the market.
Believe it or not, the pictures are usually released fairly quickly.
But content looks old very fast.
You get sick of looking at the same content, your customers want to see something different.
Right.
In reality, you're probably only going to show these images six months, twelve months, and then you're gonna pivot and do something else and try something new because trends change as well.
In most cases, are you allowed to use the shots that you give a client for your own marketing?
So with the content that I create, there's licensing, and a client is purchasing services from me based on their usage.
So if they're using it on a website, if they're going to print, if they want unlimited usage, everything is a different price tier.
But you're able to use it for your own marketing?
Yes, it depends on what the contract says.
If it's a complete buyout and they prefer that I don't use any of the content to show on my website, which is rare, but some brands want that.
And that is something that I think it would be good for people that are just starting out to understand is that when you work for a company and you're a W-2 employee and you're producing content for them, they own that content.
It's work for hire.
If you're your own business and you're a 1099 and you're doing work for a client, you own that work.
When you do the agreement with the clients, do you agree on the amount of images you have to give them?
Yes.
With e-commerce, it's usually a shot count.
So I'm delivering 50 images.
It's different than if somebody's hiring me to shoot an event.
Right.
Then I'm working for three hours and you're gonna get all the images.
So how do you the pricing in e-commerce always goes by the amount of products or amount of images or it's usually final images.
Final images.
So the most time-consuming thing for me is changing the set.
So it's a combination of you're paying me for my time to build a set and you're also paying me per shot.
If you have, say, for instance, 200 products and they're all gonna look really good in one set, then it's gonna save us a lot of time and we can shoot a lot in one day.
But if you have six different collections and each collection is a completely different style and a completely different look, it is definitely gonna require a set change for each lifestyle sets of images.
When a brand comes to me and they don't have any images for their product and they want to make lifestyle images.
I always explain to them in the first meeting that if we produce really beautiful images and you sell, for instance, on Wayfair, Wayfair will start.
To distribute those images organically and you don't have to pay a dime.
What do you mean?
It's in Wayfair's best interest to show images that are really nice.
So if you have really nice images, they're gonna pull from your images and start using it in their advertising.
And that's free.
And Facebook works the same way too.
If you have really good content, you don't have to boost the ad.
If it's very valuable content, they will start to share it and it doesn't cost you a dime.
Is there a project that you are dreaming of doing that didn't come your way yet?
Yeah, one with about seven zeros behind it.
At heart I'm a business person.
I'm in this because I love it, but I want to make money doing it.
And I got into this industry because I wanted to make money doing it.
What's your favorite products to shoot?
I think I really enjoy working with food.
Because food food?
Food is the hardest.
And I saw on your website that you have special for restaurants.
They get$1,300 for four hours of your time and a number of images.
Yes.
In the last five or six years, a restaurant without a picture, if they want to do takeouts, forget it.
They don't exist on the map unless they have good images.
Do you shoot it in the restaurant?
It has to be.
It has to be because they should they cook it while you're shooting, right?
Yeah, their kitchen is set up to make their recipes.
So it's better if I shoot in their establishment.
So can you get the whole menu in four hours?
Potentially, yeah.
If they're very efficient.
And the other reason I like to shoot in the restaurant is because I do want to capture the ambiance of the venue.
Because that's why your customer is coming to you as well.
It's not just the food.
So you said that was your favorite things to shoot.
Food.
Yes.
What's your least favorite thing?
Nothing.
You like shooting it all.
I like a challenge, for instance, ice cream.
Ice cream is very difficult to shoot if you're shooting the real ice cream because it just melts too fast.
But you always shoot the real ice cream, you don't fake it.
If a brand produces ice cream, we have to shoot their ice cream.
We cannot use fake ice cream.
They'll get sued.
What do you do with clothing?
You have to bring models or you shoot them folded on a set?
Both.
Sometimes we photograph clothing on models, and sometimes we do what we call pinups, where we're pinning them to boards and we're giving them a little bit of life.
Do you like shooting clothing?
I really enjoy shooting models.
The interaction between the photographer and the model, it's fun.
It brings life to the shoot.
If an 18-year-old comes to you, or maybe a 45-year-old that is pivoting their career, and they say, I want to start shooting e-commerce, what would you tell them to do in the first three months?
I've had both people.
I've had 18-year-olds and I've had people who are 45 who want to work with me.
And I hire people based on their attitude, their personality first and foremost.
They don't necessarily have to have a lot of experience, but they have to have the willingness to learn.
So would your advice be be an assistant for a little bit and then absolutely, yeah.
I want to explain this to young people who are just starting out so they really understand.
Because right now in YouTube, there's a lot of how-to videos.
How do you shoot this?
How do you like that?
And you will find answers.
But what you need to be exposed to is the style.
So, in order to develop a style, you get introduced to what other photographers do.
And then to start building your portfolio, you need to start somewhere.
And I think the best place to start is just copy what other people are doing.
Not because you want to be their direct competitor, but you need to practice.
And as you practice and you practice, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, your style is just gonna develop organically.
And that's where you're able to be hired because of your style of shooting, and that's what you want a brand to value the most when they hire you.
What's the biggest challenge of your business?
The business aspect of it.
Just like taking the picture is easy.
Sometimes we pitch to a client and we'll have 10 hours of meetings in a month and then not win the client.
And what's the biggest reward?
The paycheck.
Thank you so much.
I don't think people realize how much creativity and business savvy you have to have for e-commerce.
Yeah, you have to know a lot going into this business.
All right, good luck to you.
Thank you.
That's it for today.
Thanks for listening.
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