In today’s ultra-competitive world of e-commerce, stellar product photography can’t be considered a luxury. It has become essential when it comes to promoting and disseminating your e-commerce brand.
Think about this: Would you purchase from an online store that only provided written descriptions of their products? Probably not. Exquisite visual content builds trust and bridges the gap between your customers and your products in the digital space.
Professional product photography doesn’t just show your items—it tells your brand’s story, highlights your products’ unique features, and helps position your brand in the market.
Let’s dive into the world of product photography and discover how different styles can transform your brand’s visual storytelling.
Luxury Product Photography—Capturing Your Brand’s Essence
The goal of luxury product photography is clear: To highlight a certain product and grab the interest and attention of your target audience, which will encourage the purchase. Would you buy from an e-commerce brand which only features a descriptive text of its product? Of course not, because the trust level drops radically when there is no visual content to illustrate the characteristics described by a text. Product images must be created according to the type of product being featured and, regardless of the style featured in the photos, each one must clearly highlight your product’s unique features. When done well, luxury product photography can become one of your strongest allies. However, it is wrong to think of product photography as only setting an object against a white background; there's actually an art to showcasing your products in ways that capture attention and drive sales.
Essential Luxury Product Photography Styles
White Background Photography: The Standard for E-commerce Brands
The clean, crisp look of white background photography has become the gold standard for entrepreneurs selling products on major e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and Facebook Marketplace.
Created in a studio, these photos present your products in a simple, non-distracting way.
Depending on the textures, packaging, and materials used in the design of each product, a photographer must adjust to different factors when creating this type of visual content. The goal here is to create cohesive and uniform visual content.
Regardless of whether they are shooting a piece of clothing, a pair of shoes or a bottle of perfume, a professional photographer should be intent on creating a series of photographs focused on driving sales of the various products by showcasing their characteristics and/or features in the most flattering way.
Pro Tip: It is common to shoot all the products at once, in a studio, to ensure the photos have a consistent and uniform look and feel. In this type of luxury product photography, shadows can be sharpened to highlight a product’s shape or a particular feature, and the background color can change according to the object you wish to highlight.
Set Photography: Showing Options at a Glance
When your products come in multiple variations—whether colours, sizes, or styles—set photography becomes your best friend. This approach allows brands to display all available options in a single, comprehensive shot. It also reduces the need for customers to browse multiple pages, helping them make faster purchasing decisions.
This style of product photography creates opportunities to showcase complementary products, such as accessories. Consider pairing set photos with individual product shots to give customers both the overview they need and the detailed view they want.
Pro Tip: This style is the perfect opportunity to feature special accessories or other related products which you also sell.
Lifestyle Product Photography: Creating Emotional Connections
Also known as in-context photography, this product photography style brings your products to life by showing them in a realistic environment, in a context associated with a particular lifestyle. Photos will usually feature props related to the featured product.
Popular and powerful, lifestyle product photography helps your target audience envision your products in their own lives, which in turn leads to an emotional connection with your brand.
Because these photos tend to perform exceptionally well on social media platforms, lifestyle photography is the optimal solution for many luxury products. Widely used in fashion and interior design photography, it promotes a specific standard of living and creates empathy with target audiences.
Pro Tip: The best lifestyle photos tell a story that resonates with your ideal customer's aspirations and daily life.
Creative Composition: Thinking Outside the Box
Creative composition, including techniques like flat lays and artistic arrangements, can transform even the most ordinary products into compelling visual stories.
This approach adds personality to your product presentations, making your content shareable on social media. It also goes a long way in helping your brand stand out among its competition.
Here again, adding elements such as props and accessories helps brands tell a story and creates a connection with potential customers. Also, this leads to content that is much more interesting and appealing than a photo of a product set against a white background.
Pro Tip: Creative composition allows for seasonal and themed content creation. For example, instead of showing wrapping paper on its own, you can create a holiday scene with wrapped presents under a decorated tree, capturing the joy and excitement of gift-giving.
Creativity Goes A Long Way
Don’t be shy to experience these different styles, because even unattractive products, whose appeal rests on its functionality, can lead to extraordinary photographs depending on how much creativity is involved.
Here’s a good example: Instead of photographing a roll of simple wrapping paper against a white background, perhaps you can wrap another object with that paper (that is its purpose, after all) or create a layout with related items on a table? Trim a Christmas tree, set presents wrapped with the same paper underneath it, and you’ve got interesting content for the entire Holidays season!
Which Style Is the Perfect
Style For Your Brand?
All of them. Seriously.
Exploring your creativity (and that of the photographer’s) is one of the best things about product photography. Don’t be shy to experience these different styles, because even unattractive products, whose appeal rests on its functionality, can lead to extraordinary photographs depending on how much creativity is involved.
Here’s a good example: Instead of photographing a roll of simple wrapping paper against a white background, perhaps you can wrap another object with that paper (that is its purpose, after all) or create a layout with related items on a table? Trim a Christmas tree, set presents wrapped with the same paper underneath it, and you’ve got interesting content for the entire Holidays season!
Showcase Your Products Like Never Before
Remember: Your brand isn’t just selling products- it’s selling emotions, experiences, and lifestyle aspirations. The right mix of photography styles will help you create a powerful visual narrative that resonates with your audience, evokes emotions, and drives conversions, i.e. sales.
So, why not leverage the skills of a professional who specializes in creating the images your clients want to see?
