Planning Product Photographs for a Launch: The Images You Will Actually Use
Before you send me a box of beautiful things
Launching a collection is exciting. It can also mean packaging, prices, product descriptions and a lot of tabs open on your laptop. Photographs often end up on the list as one more job to squeeze in at the end.
I would rather start with a cup of tea and a plan. Not an enormous spreadsheet. Just a few decisions about where the images need to go and what a customer needs to see.
Begin with the shop page
If someone is about to buy, they need to understand the product. What does it look like from the front and side? How big is it? What is the texture? Are there colour variations, a clasp, an inside, a finish or a label that matters?
For an online shop, I would plan a clean, consistent image for each product, then useful close-ups and angles. These do a different job from a beautifully styled campaign photo. Both can be lovely; the shop images help someone decide whether the item is right for them.
Then show it in a life
Where does the product belong? A ceramic cup held in two hands tells me something a plain background cannot. A piece of jewellery worn against skin gives scale. A soap beside a towel suggests a small daily ritual.
Lifestyle images help customers imagine using or giving your work. They can also carry the colour, textures and feeling of your brand. We can choose props and settings that support the product without burying it.
Remember the spaces around the image
Your website banner may need a horizontal photograph with room for a heading. An Instagram post needs a different crop. An email header, press image or printed card might ask for something else again.
Tell me where you plan to use the photographs before the shoot. That way I can leave space in the frame where it is useful and create a mix of close, wide and vertical images. It is much easier to plan that now than to ask one photograph to fit everywhere later.
A short list to bring to the conversation
Before we photograph a launch, try writing down:
What products or variations are included, and which are the priority?
Which details answer a customer’s likely questions?
Where will the images appear: shop, homepage, email, social, wholesale or press?
What colours and materials already belong to your brand?
Which images do you need first, and when will the launch happen?
You don’t have to have every answer. The list gives us a useful starting point and helps us avoid spending the whole session on a lovely scene while the practical shop images are still missing.
Good product photography should let people see the care in what you make and give them the information they need to choose it. When we plan both, your launch images can keep working long after launch day.
Planning a collection? Tell me what you make, roughly how many products you have and where the photographs need to appear. Get in touch and we can discuss the right mix of product and lifestyle images for your business.
