Celadon Tea Caddy Product Photography

The client sells celadon tea caddies to tea and homeware buyers, and asked AIMI Visual Media in Guangzhou, China to shoot the line for its online listings. The jars are small lidded containers for loose tea, glazed in a soft jade green, with dimpled lids shaped like lotus seed pods and brown tassels on the pulls. We shot 5 images in our Guangzhou studio: one jar on its own, the 4-jar family, a hand lifting the tassel, a lid-off frame, and a close-up of the cord and bead. The set was a dark tea table with a woven mat, a tea scoop, and loose leaves, shot under a full commercial license.

Photography Challenges

1. Shiny glaze shows everything. Celadon glaze works like a mirror. Every fingerprint and dust spot prints on it, and it reflects whatever is in the room. We wiped each jar before every take, handled them with cloth gloves, and kept the studio dark around the set so the jars only reflect the one light we want.

2. Green on brown goes muddy fast. A pale green jar on a dark wooden table can photograph as a gray blob. We kept one soft light aimed at the jar and let the table fall darker, so the green stays green and the background quietly steps back.

3. The lid is the selling point. Buyers pick this jar for the lotus-pod lid and the tassel. So the lid gets its own frames: one with the lid off and leaning on the jar, one close-up of the cord and wooden bead. If the lid looks good, the jar sells.

4. Loose leaves make a mess. Scattered tea leaves look great in frame and terrible on the floor of a shot: a few stray leaves in the wrong place read as dirt. We placed the leaves one pinch at a time and checked the frame after every move.

Our Approach

Warm Tea-Table Scenes

We built one small tea-table set and shot the whole line on it: a dark woven mat, a tea scoop, loose leaves, and a rough stone for height. The single-jar frames put the product in the middle with props pushed to the edges. The 4-jar family frame raises the tall jar on the stone so the group has a top, a middle, and a front, which keeps 4 similar jars from blending into one green crowd.

Lid and Detail Frames

Two frames sell the parts buyers ask about. The lid-off frame shows the jar's open mouth with the lid leaning beside it, so shoppers can see the fit and the unglazed rim. The close-up moves in on the braided cord, the wooden bead, and the dimpled lid top, shot with a macro lens so every bump reads sharp.

Retouching

All 5 frames get the same warm finish: color locked so the celadon matches the real jars, fingerprints and dust cleaned off the glaze, and the dark set kept dark without losing the mat's weave. Files went out at 2000x2000px sRGB in JPEG (quality 90) and WebP, ready for Amazon listings and A+ Content.

"A tea caddy is a small jar with a big job: keep the tea fresh and look good doing it. My job is to make the glaze look as smooth in the photo as it feels in the hand." — June, Product Photography Team Lead

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a 5-image set like this cost?

This set came to about $175 at $35 per styled scene, props included. Plain white-background shots of each jar for your main listing image start at $12 each, and lines of 10 or more items get 10% off.

How long does the shoot take?

These 5 images were delivered in 5 business days. The tea-table set stays built for the whole session, so most of the time goes into cleaning the glaze and styling the leaves, not rebuilding the set.

Can I use these scenes on Amazon?

Yes. They are made for the secondary image slots, A+ Content, and your brand store, at 2000x2000px, which is above Amazon's zoom minimum. Your main image still needs the jar alone on pure white, and we can add that for $12 per jar.

How do you keep the green glaze from going muddy?

One soft light on the jar, and the set kept dark. If the table gets the same light as the jar, the green dies. Keeping the background a step darker is what makes the celadon glow.

Can you show the inside of the jar?

Yes. One frame in this set shows the lid off and the mouth open. If you also want a straight top-down shot into the jar, we can add it in the same session.

What if I add more jar designs later?

We keep the set notes and lighting plan on file, so new jars shot later will match these frames: same table, same light, same color. New designs run at the standard $12 or $35 per-image rates.

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