Product visuals

Product photography and video needs to showcase the things that your business depends on. Second best is not good enough in a world where the appearance of your media indicates the quality of your business.

To achieve a successful product shoot the client needs to know what their intended result is, and to provide the photographer or videographer with a detail brief describing this. This should cover the following main points;

- What environment is the product to be seen in? Plain, such as a white or grey backdrop, or in an environment relative to the product, such as a garden fork laying on a lawn, or in a set such as a model wearing a garment against a street background. There are many permutations but these dictate location which influences factors like lighting and background and can be affected by location availability and, if outdoors, weather.

- How many images or videos will be required? If a series of shots are required how many will be used? Wherever possible allow for extra shots covering different angles or effects to give you flexibility and choice.

- Shoot style. This affects the technique used in making the media and in the post processing. For example an autumnal clothing shoot may favour late afternoon in a suitably coloured forest with skilled use of light to provide the right ambiance for the product. Or a set featuring household furnishings would probably work better in a studio set up where the lighting was strictly neutral, so allowing a potential customer to place the product more easily in their location through their minds eye.

- Budget and costs. There are many types of product shoot, from an in studio simple set up to an on location shoot with models, make up artists and the administration that may be necessary to get permission to work on the location. A budget indicator will narrow the field of possibilities down; the quote provided should detail all the costs and indicate those that may vary according to uncontrollables, such as a location shoot being affected by adverse weather.

Having previous examples such as last years catalog in one way of showing what is required, or locating a similar style somewhere on the internet as an example is a popular way of demonstrating this. If you are developing a new style it is very worth while commissioning a test shoot with the photographer where you can make sure that the set up is yielding the media that you want, and also your vision is what you want it to be. It is a lot cheaper to do this than run the whole shoot only to discover that the structure does not work!

The client and the photographer need to work in a creative partnership during the early stages of this process in particular. The photographer should be advising the client of the cost and time implications of the ideas being looked at, and the practicality of being able to achieve these in a given timescale. If significant changes are needed during the shoot, such as background and lighting changes it is better to recognise these at the planning stage rather than during the shoot itself.

Everyone involved in such a shoot is going to be conscious of costs. The photographer has to manage his time as well as maintaining control over external costs such as equipment hire, model and make up artists bookings, voice over artists etc., while the client needs to be conscious that any last minute changes will have a cost impact and therefore need to be kept to an absolute minimum, though sometimes these are unavoidable. Planning and preparation are absolutely vital; just handing over a box of goodies and saying 'make them look cool' is not going to achieve a happy result!

With careful planning and preparation it is straightforward to bring in the result that the client wants on time and on budget. Not paying attention to the details leading up to the shoot can result in problems which will cause cost and time issues. Remember - 'Planning and Preparation Prevent Poor Performance'.