What are styled photographs?
Styled photographs place the product as the hero of the photograph while props and set design are used to illustrate the brand’s story.
This type of imagery involves extensive research and planning to bring all of the elements together. In a commercial environment, they are produced as a team where a photographer, prop stylist, set designer and art director all work together to achieve a set goal for the client.
There are no rules and styled images can be wildly creative. For example, using prop styling with your products could assist in communicating to the target audience something about the product, whilst the surrounding set design may be representative of the brands style. Another example is employing styling that addresses a themed campaign such as a ‘spring product launch’ or ‘mothers day’. The opportunities this type of imagery can produce is endless, it can also assist in illustrating the product’s use, its scale or how it would appear ‘in situ’. For example, if your product was a plate, you may want to illustrate it in a styled tablescape to demonstrate function, scale, quality and a colour palette that is ‘on trend’ or the consumer could see themselves using at home.
This advertising photograph for Patient Wolf aimed at highlighting to the audience how to use the gin in situ (summer cocktail party). The earthy tone, festive cocktail food and summer light evoke a feeling of celebration, good times and relaxation. It would be near impossible to communicate this kind of emotion without planned food and prop styling to compliment the gin bottle.
High quality styled shots are built frame by frame, piece by piece. The product is placed in a set designed to suit the brief and then elements are added one by one (styled to camera) until the composition is perfected. In this process, the camera is tethered to a large screen for easy viewing of each element and allowing optimum attention to detail. Capturing products in this way is also beneficial to creating stop motion animations or GIF files for movement in your social media posts. Stop motion videos are created frame by frame and then looped using editing software. Styling to camera can record this process naturally so you are ticking off the ‘to do’ list two content needs in the one shoot.
Although this set design is minimal. A huge amount of planning went into the prop sourcing and preparation to work with the brand colours. Each of the photographs were built up piece by piece which double as a stop motion animation along with campaign files.
The following steps are a glimpse on what you need to organise for a styled brand photoshoot.
A brief that outlines the final outcome and deliverables.
Brand colours or style guide.
A moodboard
A shot list that addresses the moodboard and the brief and acts as a checklist on the day (this is essential for timing)
A call sheet to organise any models, hair and makeup, assistants, prop stylists, food stylists, large scale hire items.
An adequate space where you can control the light or use natural light.
Backgrounds and surfaces to suit the product/brand.
Sourced props to compliment the key theme/idea of the photoshoot.
Fresh props to compliment the key theme/idea of the photoshoot.
Over the coming blog posts, we will break these processes down individually - make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to see the latest posts ;)