Creative Product Photography: 3 Basic Rules to Elevate Your Brand
With new brands emerging almost daily and the average consumer seeing 4,000 – 10,000 marketing images a day (whew!), how do you possibly stand out in a sea of visual content? Step out from the standard, old product photography and do something different! Creative product photography will drive sales and make a lasting impression in your consumer’s mind.
Did you know creative product photography is more than just slapping a bright background behind your product or adding some dramatic lighting? It’s about tapping into who you are as a brand and translating that into your visual content. Is sustainability important to you? Stay away from stark, unnatural lighting setups. Do you need to communicate scale to your customer? Think about adding a prop or model that gives it context.
Keep reading for some pro tips and case studies on how to do this well.
Pro Takeaway: Tell Your Story
Communicating who you are to your customer is necessary to create a lasting brand and a loyal customer. Your brand story should be prevalent in all your content from your campaign imagery to your PDP photography. It’s so easy for brands to make product photography an afterthought—just get it done quickly and easily. But creative product photography doesn’t have to be slow and difficult. It’s easy to streamline the process if you do the work upfront. Building product photography into your brand style guide as an extension of your other content helps keep your branding cohesive and unique to you.
Amour Vert images shot at Hyperblack Studios
As an eco-friendly brand that focuses on sustainability without sacrificing quality or comfort, Amour Vert uses a tan-colored background with a soft, sun-lit lighting setup to invoke a natural and carefree feeling with their customer. You can easily identify the product images with the brand and there’s a seamless aesthetic that runs through their campaign imagery, social content, and creative product photography building brand loyalty.
Pro Takeaway: Compliment Your Product
Look to your product to come up with unique product photography ideas. How can you highlight what makes your product special or how can you use your PDP images to compliment your product? It’s your job to quickly communicate to your customer what makes your product unique. Think about the angles of the product, the type of photography and creative styling, and what’s included in the shot. Do you need to communicate scale to your customer? Think about adding a prop or model that gives it context. Does your product have a unique shape? Perhaps your apparel would look more appealing to show off its form on a 3-dimensional form instead of flat. Do you have a logo in a special spot? Add a view that shows it off!
Grummies images shot at Hyperblack Studios
Sometimes this means adding props to emphasize what’s in your product or how it works. If these vitamins were shot as a basic product on white with no context, consumers will quickly scroll through without giving it a thought. Adding a pop of color that compliments the packaging and props that correspond to the ingredients tell the Grummies customer, “There’s real food in here! This isn’t any old vitamin!”
Pro Takeaway: It’s All In The Details
Don’t discount the importance of product details. With images continually getting larger and larger in the digital space, it’s common to think you can skip over details since your customer can just zoom in. But keep in mind shopping online means that you can’t touch or feel the product like you could in a physical store. You need to gain trust with your customer and that means helping them feel like they can touch and hold the product when they really can’t! The creative use of details in your product photography can show how thick your material is, or if it’s waterproof. They can show the texture of lotion or show off well-thought-out details like buttons and zippers. If it’s a value add, make sure to display that to your customer through a detail view.
Taylor Stitch images shot at Hyperblack Studios
Taylor Stitch’s products are full of features that drive the price but aren’t evident to a customer unless you get closer. Shooting detail views for each specific feature communicates to your customer what they’re paying for—the quality of the stitching, the softness of the fabric, and the specialty buttons.
Selling online can give you a unique advantage to call out what’s so special about your brand and your product. The bottom line is that product photography from start to finish needs to be intentional. Effective and creative product photography strengthens your brand identity and communicates clearly to your customer who you are and the value your product will bring.
These tips simply scratch the surface of what truly creative product photography can mean. If you’re looking for a studio to elevate your product photography, Hyperblack would love to help. Contact us now!
