Lifestyle photography locations
It's important for your brand to have different types of images that you can use for different purposes. Commercial and Editorial images tend to be abstract and focus on selling your product. But Lifestyle images serve a different purpose. Lifestyle images are about translating a product to real life and telling a relatable story that includes your products.
One of the key ingredients in a lifestyle image is the location. The location of your images needs to reflect and represent your brand and the story you are telling. So in this post we are going to explore some location options for lifestyle product images.
Images shot at home
If you are creating lifestyle images at home, you are going to be using the interior of your home as a backdrop. So the first thing you want to ask yourself is: is your home the kind of home that will appeal to your ideal client? If the answer is no, then you might not want to shoot these lifestyle images at home. Perhaps you have a friend who has a home that you could use. Perhaps you want to wait until you go on holiday to that gorgeous AirB&B and photograph your products there.
If you do decide to shoot at home, make sure you clean the space first and remove any personal, or uneeded objects from the frame. Cluttered backdrops or messes are only going to overwhelm the viewer's eye and make them want to look away from the image. A helpful tip for shooting your products at home is to use ‘tight’ or close up framing. This will help to concentrate the viewer’s eye on the product rather than the full scene as well as crop out any irrelevant or personal objects.
EXAMPLE 1
Keep in mind that the location will need to work with your brand’s colour palette. So if your brand colour palette is orange and peach and then you want to try to infuse these colours into your location as much as possible This might mean purposely picking a location where these colours are prominent or adding props and objects with these colours to the scene.
EXAMPLE 2
Images shot on location
You may also like to shoot your products ‘on location’ which means finding another location (usually outdoors) where you can photograph your products.
This location will need to make sense for your product. This may relate to the ‘theme’ of your products. For example: if your product is a skin care cream with plant-based ingredients, you may like to photograph them in the bush or rainforest surrounded by plants and nature. Or it may relate to the lifestyle of your ideal clients. For example: If your ideal customer is outdoorsy and adventurous, you might photograph your products at the beach.
EXAMPLE 3
When photographing in outdoor locations, you will need to think about finding the best lighting. We will talk more about how to find good light in future blog posts, but generally speaking the first and last rays of the sun are the best for outdoor photography - especially if your product shoot includes models.
OK, so there you have it. I hope this blog has been helpful and gave you some ideas for shooting on location. In the coming months I’ll be releasing some more resources on lifestyle photography so if this is a topic of interest sign up for the newsletter in the footer of the website to be the first to hear when it launches!
As always, if you create anything awesome please share your pics in the Facebook Group Photography for Makers - I’d love to see your work!