Creating A Cohesive Brand With Product and Lifestyle Photography

Creative direction for a brand doesn’t just extend to your copy and design, but across all aspects of your online presence and marketing channels. And that includes photography!

Your brand’s imagery, whether across social media or your website, should tell a cohesive story. A visual representation of your brand, photography gives a personal insight into the atmosphere and experience that customers will have with your product or service.

Wondering where to get started with your brand product photography? Here are four of our favorite tips for creating stunning imagery. 

1. Getting the Right Backdrop

Functional product photography sets your product on a seamless background, and focuses on using light and shadows to really display every element of your product to customers and help them to make an informed buying decision. 

While much product photography is done to a white backdrop, lifestyle photography is also a great way to tell a story. The practice of photographing your products within a stylized setting, such as in a garden or creek, lifestyle photography sets the scene and provides a beautiful aesthetic for customers to hold onto. It puts your product or service into action, showing a behind-the-scenes view into what customers can expect. 

2. Utilizing Proper Lighting

Proper lighting and camera are essential when photographing a product, helping to make or break your brand photography session and determine the results of the entire shoot. But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to lighting in your brand photography, as each product will differ in their needs.

Aside from getting the perfect lighting, the way you play with shadows can help create depth and drama in your brand imagery, overall elevating your visual identity.

3. Aligning With The Art Direction

Especially when it comes to lifestyle photography, making sure that your imagery aligns with your already existing visual brand identity is very important. Is your brand light and airy, or dark and moody? You want your entire brand to tell a cohesive story, where your images augment mood, purpose, and vision. 

Here are some questions you should be considering when deciding your art direction:

• What colors/vibes should be emphasized in my photography? 
• What emotions should customers feel?
• What areas of your business do you want to highlight for your customers? 
• How can you bring all of your best features to the surface in your photography? 

4. Adding Props and Styling

Once you have your art direction, lighting, and backdrop figured out, you can learn how to add props or stylization to your images that will bring them to the next level. The biggest rule here is that props should always act as a complement to your product, and never distract or detract from it. 

Adding flowers, embossed paper, mirrors, or pops of color can add that extra point of interest to draw the eye while adding a little extra flair. Don’t go overboard here, you’ll find that a few well-positioned props can add a lot of shine and appeal to your images

Do you need help creating a cohesive brand with product and lifestyle photography? Let’s work together to create a customer experience that is unforgettable.