Starter Kit. Idea 151 of 500. Cluster 7
Product photography services for small producers
The mechanism, from the book
The tiny business pathway. A rural woman with an exceptional product should not need photography, English copy, packaging design and a distributor before the world can find her.
The first step
Take your phone, a white sheet and a window, and photograph the products of three small producers near you for free: a pickle maker, a weaver, a spice seller. Give each the photos and ask them to post them wherever they sell. Then ask whether they would pay a fixed fee for the next set, and for the names of two other producers. Paid repeat work is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A small producer selling online who knows their products look worse in photos than they do in the hand.
- What leaves today
- A good product with a bad photo never gets past a foreign buyer's screen, so it stays local and sells for less.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a small photography business.
- Inland Revenue Department. Ask how a small service business should register for tax.
Check before you spend
That clients agree in writing who owns the photos, and that the equipment and studio space are insured.
Find out these three numbers
- What do small producers pay now for product photos?
- How many products can be shot in one day?
- What does a basic studio setup cost?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"Her product arrives. We photograph it properly. We help with the packaging."
Photographing the product properly is the first step the book's pathway offers.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.