Building Your Brand With a Product Photographer

Handing your products to a photographer for a shoot can feel like handing over your child for a day. Before signing that pre shoot contract, as a business owner we need to think, 'can I trust that the photographer is aligned with our brands identity?'. In the right hands, a commercial photographer can be as essential to a brand as your store front and in the wrong hands, you can spend thousands on re-shoots and waste hours of your companies time.

So how do we make sure that we are on the same page? Communication. Simple isn't it, but as photographers what we need as part of that communication is consistency in message and theme. Before a shoot it's the clients role to communicate to the photographer who their business is for, what other brands are doing what they want to do and how can we do it better? What trends are you tapping into, what kind of aesthetic does your brand have, and sometimes most importantly, what brand message do you want to avoid? Do you want your brand to feel affordable and relatable or premium and unobtainable? The difference between the two can often be as simple as putting a lighting modifier on or off.

It is our jobs as photographers to interpret and make sense of the reference images your brand provides and reverse engineer how they look. What are the shadows like in the references provided? What kind of catch lights? What colours? What props need to be ordered? What kind of perspective is being used here?

Once we develop lasting relationships with brands this relationship just gets easier and easier, to the point where we feel truly invested in your brands message. In the same way that using reoccurring models builds brand familiarity, using the same photographer on every shoot means that your brands output is coherent and thematic.

This is one key advantage our retainer clients have. Committing to a set amount of shoots per month with the same person can be a weight lifted and you can wave goodbye to those lack of content fears now you know that you can rely on a set amount of assets each month.

An integral part of every one of our shoots is planning the shoot with someone that knows the product in and out. Wether this be having someone from the brand on set on the day, or by setting out guidelines with product developers, managing directors or art directors beforehand to make sure that everything is photographed as it should be. Here it's the small things that make a big difference. Say we are photographing a bottle of moisturiser, does the client want the clear plastic top on, or off? How does the product ship, how does it look best? Which way should the nozzle be facing?

Discussing all of these small details saves time in retouching, avoids any wasting time in the long run, and makes sure that your photography represents your brand and your product in the best light possible.

Here are 3 different shoots from the same brand, using the photographer (me)

5 Tips From Behind of the Scenes of a Luxury Watch Photography Shoot in Manchester

1.Always set the time

Omega Speed Master Watch Photography

As always, branding is key In product photography. This is especially true when it comes to watch photography. Tradition in the watch advertisement industry is to set the time exactly or close to the 10:10 position. This is to ensure the logo is perfectly framed In between the two hands of the watch. Strangely this tradition often even continues to digital watches even though there are no hands to position.

2. Mechanical Watches and Unscrewed Crowns

Luxury watches are often mechanical or automatic meaning that sometimes when we move the watch to the set, our previously stopped watch can start up again. This can create inconsistency from shot to shot. As time is always precious on a product photography shoot, we don’t want to be waiting around for the watch to run out of power again. The work around for this is to pull out the watches crown, stopping the hands from moving. From here, we can carefully move the watches crown to the original position in post production.

Rolex Watch Photography Before and After Retouching

3. Controlling Reflections

It is very common for watches to consist almost entirely of stainless steel and chrome. These reflective materials can be problematic for product photography and as such it is often necessary to introduce white reflectors into our set for the watches to reflect onto. This can be important to stop watches from appearing darker than they are in person.

Reflection Control - Rolex Watch Photography

4.Velvet softening

Photographing watches inside their luxury boxes can be full of imperfections. The nature of velvet makes it tricky to get a soft look right out of camera. In photoshop we can use a gradient along with a high pass filter in order to get a soft look in the final image.

Watch Photography - Before and After Velvet Retouching

5.Focus Stacking

Shooting very close up macro watch images like the one above is achieved through a process known as focus stacking. This is when we take several of the same image with the camera positioned on a tripod. Each shot will have slightly different parts of the watch in focus. From here we combine all of the images in photoshop and voila, all of the details we need in focus are nice and sharp.

All of these images are merged together in order to create the final image

Conclusion

Teal Studios are specialists in product photography of all kinds. We love luxury watch photography shoots and ensure that your watches look perfect on your site and on social media. Get in touch today to book a shoot with Manchesters top affordable product photography studios today.