White backgrounds used for product images is a great way to boost your e-commerce efforts. Not only are white backgrounds professional-looking, they are also an effective and efficient way to command attention to your products, as it doesn’t create any visual noise. It’s easier to take consistent images for your brand when you use a plain white background. It makes your images and branding consistent, which in turn develops customers’ trust in your products. At the very least, your images will appear cleaner when using white backgrounds.
Generally, photographers rely on four basic elements - using a solid white background to eliminate distractions, using sunlight as background if needed, using the flash in the same manner, and avoiding overexposing the background.
In order to ensure that white backgrounds will remain bright and clean and the subject looks as good as possible, the photographer can use one light with a subject who is positioned near the background. This technique doesn’t rely on background light but still keeps it bright due to the “depth of light” principle - since the light falls off in intensity as it travels farther from its source, the distance from the subject to the background dramatically affects the luminosity of the background.
The photographer can also use two lights with the distance between the subject and background. This ensures that the background will look as white as possible and appear brighter in pictures with overexposure, which blurs the edges of the subject and ruins the contrast and sharpness.
Additionally, white is the most versatile background you can use in taking pictures - photographing and editing products on a white background is fairly easy. Another plus - you can turn the white background into any color that you choose using tools in post-production.
