Selling products has always required some kind of product photography. And because there’s so much online now, having creative product photography and great social media imagery will undoubtedly help to sell your items. But, apart from hiring a photographer that knows what they’re doing, how can you influence the look and feel of the images you end up with? I thought it would be useful to share how to write a photography brief.
As good as any photographer is, without a product photography brief, you could end up paying for images that don’t fit with your products, style or brand. And we don’t want that! What you want to come out with is a set of photographs which make your products stand out from the crowd.
How to write a photography brief
So here are my tips on how to write a photography brief. Making decisions and including as much information here will ensure that your photo shoot is as stress free as possible, and you receive the images you’re after.
Choose a theme
Perhaps you’re creating a collection for a particular season or showcasing a range of products. Choose a topic or theme to work with and it will help you to generate ideas of what you’d like. For example, does the theme have a particular feeling attached to it that you would like to portray in your images?
Set some goals
Why are you having these pictures taken? And you can’t get away with ‘because we need new photos!’ Is it to increase your social media following, update your website to entice purchasers, or are you planning to use them to create videos? Whatever your reason, set some really specific goals so that you can monitor and measure them too.
Who’s going to see your images?
Have a think about who your likely audience is. Possibly your existing target customer or you might be looking to break into a new market. Details like their gender, age and interests are really useful for a photographer to know before they get started. It’ll also have a bearing on whether you need specific type of model in the shots.
About your brand
Sharing brand colours and fonts are useful to know as a photographer can try and sprinkle your colours into the photographs, perhaps as a product photography background.
Location, location, location
Where would you like the shoot to take place? Is it indoors, outdoors or a mixture of the two? Then decisions can be made about the type of backdrops required.
How many images?
Giving the photographer an estimate of the number of images you’re expecting will help them to estimate the amount of time they’ll need to do the job. Because they don’t only need to include the time of the physical shoot, there’s the narrowing down the selection and editing the images too.
Key dates
And when do you need your pictures for? If it’s a particular season, how far in advance can the images be taken? And what is the photographer’s lead-time?
A clear brief for the photographer
Being really well-defined in your approach will help your photographer in their pricing for a photo shoot. And you’ll come out with some really great creative product photography.
And before your photo shoot takes place, take a read of my blog to prepare you for the shoot.
As always, if you have any questions, just drop me a message. If I can help out, I will.
Gill x
