Product and Lifestyle Shooting

Product and Lifestyle Shooting

As the marketing needs of my clients has advanced over the years, so my service has had to change and adapt to remain useful and relevant. What services I can offer as a creative studio reflect what I am being asked to provide. My expertise as a photographer is shooting creative images of objects that need to look and feel a certain way in order to be of interest to a certain market and customer. The human experience within marketing images, and that feeling of connection, can be explored through using models or real people alongside what is actually being sold. Hence the discussion between myself and my client usually at some comes round to how to integrate the inanimate and the animate, how we can work with both product and lifestyle shooting.

Services Provided

The Bowers and Wilkins 600 S2 series shoot combined pretty well all of our photography and film skills into a condensed couple of days. As usual, our creative director planned out the shoot list and the story board for the film. Our production services nailed the studio locations, and planned out every hour, and moment with precision.

When on location, we can either organise and dress the spaces with the existing furniture and props to give us the ambience, look and feel we desire, or we plan out in advance what props and styling we need to enhance the space to take it to the level that the brief requires. This is where our amazing production team comes into play with technical recce’s and careful planning to ensure everything can get safely in and out of a location. In this case we did a bit of both, working with all the greenery and large props that existed already and then we had specially chosen sideboards, chairs and rugs to finish off the look of the room.

Product and Lifestyle – Stills and Film

I work hard with my trusted to provide both stills and video at the same time to maximise the content we produce for a given budget. Product and Lifestyle shooting is the perfect situation for us to promote this route otherwise shoot production costs can start to scale very quickly.

The benefits of dovetailing stills and video together works in the clients favour through reduced shooting schedules, reducing the size of the crew, and of course it limits the clients time out of the office.

The meaning of the words ‘Product’ and ‘Lifestyle’

‘Product’ shooting I think we can all understand. This happens in the studio or on location. Generally, this side of the organisation is relatively straight forward, and my long-term relationships with clients ensures that I normally can execute these image requirements with minimal fuss. Product shots can be taken on location if the focus is the product itself with minimal distraction around it.

‘Lifestyle’ can be a bit of a chameleon. It means different things to different clients! To a product focused business, lifestyle can just mean anything that is not shot in the studio or in traditional ways. i.e. Anything that is a pack shot of a product, creative or otherwise, and shot on a ‘plain’ studio background is going to be product. Shooting products in a context, shooting in sets and shooting outside of the studio situation can be called lifestyle. It doesn’t have to involve people or models all of the time, however it generally has those connotations in people’s minds. Lifestyle can also mean a styled set where there is an indication of humanity, of use. Props can be used to bring forward this idea that the product in question is in use, just been put down, the person being just out of shot. This kind of thing.

Communication is Understanding

Product and Lifestyle shooting is not just semantics. Our job as a creative hub of experienced professionals is to ensure we understand completely what or client is thinking when we start to discuss the details of what marketing assets they want to have. We may need to dig deep into exactly what is in the mind of the person briefing us. Having good references, mood boards and literal examples can really help save time and round about conversations. We have all heard what can happen if we assume we know something!

If you like great looking audio tech products, have a look at Bowers and Wilkins.

Should you fancy your own take on product and lifestyle shooting let’s chat.