Lifestyle Product Shooting
As the marketing needs of my clients has advanced over the years, so my services have changed and adapted 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 particular market segment and audience. Now more than ever we need positive human experience in marketing imagery, and that feeling of connection and fulfilment can be explored through using 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 lifestyle and product.
So what are the lifestyle options available to us?
When on location, we can either organise and dress the spaces with the existing furniture and props to give us the right 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 communicates the life and the style that the audience will appreciate. 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 the studio, we can elevate product photography to be more ‘lifestyle’ in its presentation by creating an environment that has a story behind it. We can use props, dressing and sets to help us do this.
Lifestyle Product – Stills and Film
I work hard with my trusted associates, when possible, to provide both stills and video at the same time to maximise the content produced for a given production budget. Shooting lifestyle marketing assets is the perfect situation for us to develop both stills and video alongside each other, benefitting from using the same lighting and set ups.
The benefits of dovetailing stills and video together works in the clients favour through reduced shooting schedules, reducing the size of the crew, reducing shoot time and of course that means clients have less time out of the office🤓
The meaning of Lifestyle -In my world!
The meaning of the word lifestyle can be a bit of a chameleon. It means different things to different people! My understanding and interpretation of lifestyle is anything that is not shot in a fixed and rigid traditional product way. So, things like shooting products in a context, shooting in sets or shooting on location definitely distances the image from a formal studio product shot. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve people or models all of the time, however it generally has those connotations in people’s minds. Lifestyle means there is an indication of humanity, of use. We as human beings need to be able to authentically relate to a marketing image if it is to resonate. Simple things like using props, being free with product placement and composition 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. These subtle nuances of how I can control an image change the audience’s perception of what they are seeing. They start to connect…
Communication is Understanding
Lifestyle Product shooting is not just semantics. Our job (PS Creative Studio) as a creative group 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. What is the message?
Things that help us do this are having good visual references, mood boards and literal examples that can really help save time and get us to the core of what needs to be spoken about. We have all heard what can happen if we assume we know something!
Have a look here at how Marantz have used our lifestyle location images on a web page. And if you interested in more wearable technology images check on the gallery for earbuds here!
Should you fancy your own take on product and lifestyle shooting let’s chat.