One of the biggest challenges in marketing photography for smaller products is the obvious reason that it’s more difficult to present details. As much as you’ve tried to photograph your own small products, they perhaps never turned out well due to problems mastering your macro lens. Or, you simply didn’t have a professional enough camera.
Other times, it was maybe just a styling problem. Overly basic product photography can look boring to an average viewer without adding a little creativity.
Lifestyle photography has become a more popular method in capturing images of products and people. When you put them together, you can effectively showcase a small, handheld product you’re about to debut.
How Can Lifestyle Photography Work With Small Products?
The point of bringing lifestyle photography to your marketing campaign is to turn the ordinary into art. Normally, a lifestyle photographer goes out and about to capture people living their everyday lives. When placing this in context of designing a new building, it can help people better understand a particular neighbourhood.
For a small product, it’s going to mean an advertising photographer capturing people using your handheld product in a way that isn’t posed.
How do you go about this, though, so it doesn’t look staged?
Showcasing Your Small Product in Use
If you’re going to photograph a small product, it’s better to showcase it in use so your first-time visitors can see exactly what it does. A typical problem in marketing small products is many companies photograph them in an overly static way. They typically show them with white backgrounds or at angles where it’s impossible to understand any practical use.
An experienced advertising photographer is going to find creative ways to integrate people with your product so it makes sense in the problems it solves.
Ask this important question to start when designing your product: What kind of practical problems can it solve for an average consumer?
Knowing this from the beginning helps the photographer bring a successful lifestyle angle.
Capturing the Problems Being Solved
Should you take photos of models using your product outdoors or indoors? Your advertising photographers should have enough expertise to understand what would work best. The key is to capture these people using your product in a natural way so it clearly demonstrates what it does.
Rather than hire professional models who might try to pose in front of the camera, hire average people to come in and use your new product. The photographer can capture their reactions to using your prototype for the first time, likely bringing surprising reactions.
Few people would think to take a beta test of a new product and turn it into a photo session. It can bring a new refreshing take to your marketing campaign and introduce your small, handheld product in an innovative way.
Adding Video to the Mix
Using marketing photography doesn’t necessarily have to mean sticking to still photos. An expert advertising photographer may also have video skills to complement the other images.
In many cases, adding short videos with photos helps better explain how your product works. It’s especially useful when it’s an overly technical product for the B2B industry. Weighing down your marketing campaign with too much text only ends up boring people who want more visual facts.
If you add video, your photography team should have complete knowledge of video production. They’ll help choose the right narrator, the production style, and how long your supplemental videos should run.
Based on most trends, you’ll want to keep those videos short and to the point – even if you’re explaining a key product detail.
Visit us at Visionair Photography so we can help you with this approach. We’ve become a leader in providing advertising photography and video for numerous industries throughout Sydney and Melbourne.