Creating a brand is a challenging task. It takes hours of dedication, hard work and sometimes some luck to become successful. To begin with, you may have an idea of what your logo and business looks like, but did you know what theme or style you should create for your brand?
Enter lifestyle photography.
Using a genre of lifestyle photography brands can build their business through visual stories. Now, when talking about photography, not every photo will match your business, which is why it’s important to brainstorm your concepts. As a guide we recommend following these five lifestyle photography tips to help you establish your business.
Think about what you want to portray.
When building your brand using lifestyle photography, you should closely align the look and feel with your brand guide. What’s a brand guide you might ask?
A brand guide is essentially your logo, text and colours. When rearranged in different ways for various campaigns, these three items should be instantly recognisable with your company or product. The same consistency needs to happen with all the lifestyle photography planned.
Figure out a theme or genre for your photographs and decide on the orientation.
To determine what you would like to photograph, think about establishing a theme. Or, follow a specific genre. Should your photos reflect a relaxed vibe or is your brand more upmarket? Next, determine what photo orientation (vertical, horizontal or square) you should be using. Will you be publishing all your marketing material in a magazine that requires vertical imagery or is the content for online use and more specific for each platform?
Determine the environment where you would like the lifestyle photography to take place.
What type of product do you have? Is the product an outdoor product that would best photograph against green foliage or a blue sky? Is the product only used indoors within a kitchen environment? Whatever the case, think up one or two locations (indoor, outdoor or in a studio) and then define what colour palette you should include.
Follow your brand guidelines when using colours.
Generally, it is best to use the colours from your logo as the dominant colours throughout the image or background. Probably the most iconic example we can think of is Coca-Cola. In all their marketing campaigns all you see is red and a bit of white. Red is the colour associated with the drink so on a summer’s day when you look at a cafe and see red; you know Coke is on the menu. When creating your brand, the same philosophy should work into your lifestyle photography. Think about the environment you want to photograph in and take into consideration your brand’s colours.
Understand the perspective of your lifestyle images.
What angles do you want your lifestyle images to portray? How will the angles affect your brand? Do you want to tell your brand’s story from someone’s point of view? Or, would you rather the people be immersed within the scene, ultimately engaging or consuming your product? Keeping this message consistent is vital. A great example to demonstrate perspective would be GoPro imagery. This brand puts you in the person’s perspective in all their lifestyle photos. So, the next time you see someone doing something adventurous you instantly relate the photo to a GoPro shot.
Define your audience and use relatable models.
Probably the most crucial thing to do to help create your brand is to understand who your audience is. If they are a young demographic, use similar aged models in your lifestyle photos.
Brainstorm some ideas and write them down. Work with your designer to help come up with a concept that is recognisable and closely fits your brand’s identity. When you eventually get to working with a photographer to capture your lifestyle images, ensure you have a stylist to help communicate your brand messaging through your pictures.