How To Take Great Board Game Photos:Go Outdoors!
From our Fly-A-Way in the Wild series, shot outdoors!
Whether you’re a publisher marketing your tabletop game, an indie game designer launching on Kickstarter or a content creator making a review, you need good product photos to ensure your success.
One way to help your board game photos stand out is taking your game off the tabletop and into the wilderness! While it might not work for every theme, the change in environment can help you come up with fresh new ideas; and you’ll have the beauty of mother nature and ample natural light to take unique and beautiful photos.
It may seem daunting to shoot in a rugged and rapidly-changing environment, especially if you don’t have much experience with photography, or are just nerdy city dwellers like us. Fortunately, we had the help of our creative director Oon Hong, a bird photographer with 14 years of experience with outdoor photography. She’s even braved extreme weather conditions such as -40°C winters to get the perfect shot!
We’ve created this guide as a culmination of our experiences (mostly Oon Hong’s), to help you prepare for your next outdoor adventure/board game photoshoot!
1. Before the shoot
Planning your list of shots
Time is of the essence when you’re shooting outdoors, as weather and lighting conditions can change suddenly. Preparing a checklist of shots helps you work more efficiently, making sure you get the pictures you need before conditions change. It also prevents you from missing out a shot or two (and having to travel back to a previous location – something both tiring and time-consuming!).
Here’s a template we created that you can download for your shoot! We’ve included some sample text to show you how we used it. Feel free to edit the headings based on your needs. You can group them according to the shot’s intended purpose (i.e. is this a photo for Instagram or a video for TikTok?) or location. We included:
Location
Background
Description of shot
Component needed
How many shots needed
Prepare to take plenty of shots, and take into consideration different layouts. For example, you could create some compositions with your subject in the centre, and others with your subject on the left based on the Rule of Thirds, leaving space for text in future graphics. It’s also good to shoot in both portrait and landscape mode, so you can use the photos for a variety of purposes, such as social media posts, ad banners, etc.
Ultimately, this template is just a guide. Plans may change when you’re out of the studio. Weather conditions might make certain shots impossible, or you might get sudden inspiration based on something you chance upon in nature. We made a lot of stuff up on the fly during our shoot. Be willing to stay flexible and get creative!
We tried really hard to find a branch that would line up perfectly with our Japanese Paradise Flycatcher card. I think we did a pretty good job!
Packing List
Here’s a sample packing list that you can use as a starting point:
Insect repellant
Blue-tack, toothpicks, washi tape, string
Sunscreen
A hat/cap
Camera or Phone
SD Cards, Spare/portable batteries
Scissors
List of shots
Board game components
Water
We recommend that you pick out exactly which components you’d like to shoot beforehand. For our Fly-A-Way shoot, we only needed the bird cards, so that’s what we brought. This makes shooting smoother, especially as you’re roughing it out with your bulky equipment.
Ease-of-set-up aside, not every environment accommodates all board game components equally – cute meeples might be good to photograph in a studio lightbox, but are more likely than not going to get lost in a grassy plain. And are you sure you want to bring a full deck of cards into a windy field?
2. During the shoot
Lighting
While being outside means you’re always shooting in “natural light”, not all natural light is created equal!
This may seem counterintuitive, but you want to avoid shooting around noon. Although the mid-day sun is at its brightest, this makes for harsh shadows around your components. It may also cause glare on your cards.
Avoid rainy or overcast days if you can – they may make your photos look dull. If you’re in the dead of winter or living somewhere without much light, consider bringing reflectors.
If you want a particular warm and nostalgic mood, you can shoot during the “golden hour” – the hour before sunset where everything is bathed in golden light. This may give your components a warmer, orange-yellowish tone, but can help your photos feel cosy and cheerful as well. You can consider this especially if you want to include people in the shot!
Ultimately, we find soft morning light an hour after sunrise (in Singapore, this means 8am to 10am) works best for our outdoor shoots. The soft lighting helps the colours shine true to print – well worth getting up early to shoot!
We recommend shooting your photos in RAW format. This will help you adjust for difficult outdoor lighting conditions in post-production!
Securing your components in the wild
Our concept for this shoot was to showcase the Fly-A-Way birds in their natural habitats, as bird habitats are a big part of Fly-A-Way (for point scoring, visuals and educational purposes).
We went to 2 different locations – Coney Island, with its iconic beach views and forested areas for our wetlands and forest habitats, and Punggol Waterway to visit its instagram-famous lalang fields for our final open country shot.
We couldn’t have our hands awkwardly holding cards up in the shots if we wanted to give the impression of birds in their natural environments. Hence, we used blue-tack and washi tape to affix satay sticks to the back of our cards.
(Tip: Before applying washi tape to your components, stick them on your clothes and peel them off. Repeat a few times. The fibres from your clothes make the tape less sticky, and less likely to damage your precious cards. We also recommend taping your cards on-site. Although this takes up precious shooting time, you’re less likely to damage the cards.)
Using satay sticks to prop up our cards in the logs and sand.
With the sticks attached, we could fix the cards into little holes in rocks, or have our cards “stand” on sand. This allowed us to take photos without hurting either our surroundings or our cards. After shooting, we ensured that no waste or litter remained. For your own shoot, you can consider a similar method or use other nature-safe materials like string.
3. Post-shoot
You’ve braved the great outdoors, and now you’re back where you belong – hunched in front of a screen. It’s time to organise and edit your photos!
There’s no hard and fast rule for how to organise your photos, but here’s what we do: First, we shortlist our photos and copy them to a separate folder. This reduces the number of files you have to sift through. You can go through a few rounds of this, until you’ve finalised the shots that you want to edit.
Some easy photos to exclude while shortlisting: shots where your components are blurred, shots with fingers at the side or people walking into your shot and duplicate shots (or photos that look very similar).
Remember our earlier advice about choosing a variety of compositions for different uses!
You can now begin the editing process! In general, you want to make your photos bright while retaining the colour of your components, with your components as a focal point. If you shot in RAW format, here are some tutorials on how to edit RAW photos.
Conclusion: Have Fun!
Outdoor shoots can be physically taxing, but they’re also lots of fun! Know that you’ve done your best during preparation, and try to enjoy your day out with the team. We made some great memories on our shoot – like learning to identify a magpie by its song, running through tall grass that we’d just spotted a snake in, and meeting someone who recognised Fly-A-Way!
Trying to find a good hole to stick the card in.
We hope this guide will encourage you to take that first step outdoors, and that you’ll come away with some great photos.
If you need any help, feel free to reach out to us below or via our social media channels. We’d also love to know if this guide helped you!
