If the first bite is taken with the eye, then high quality food photography that tells your brand’s story, should be at the heart of your marketing campaign. To get the most out of your food photography it really is worth spending time to clearly define your brief and think carefully about where and how your images will be used.
What type of food photography do I need?
Before commissioning a photographer, think about the different types of images you may need. As a minimum we would suggest ensuring you have a good catalogue of both:
- Lifestyle, or recipe photography
- Pack shots
Lifestyle food photography
This is where you can really let your creativity shine through. Think about your brand and product story and how this can be communicated through photography. Depending on your product you may want to use food photography to;
- demonstrate product usage, or recipe ideas
- tell your brand story
- depict production method(s)
- position your product in a clear sector i.e. foodservice or retail
The style of the photography should be synergistic and work in harmony with your brand. We recently designed new product labels for Stone’s Cider and commissioned Made Portraits to photograph the range.
Our brief was to ‘refresh’ the packaging to give it modern look and at the same time reflect the cider’s artisan characteristics. The same approach was reflected in the photography, which introdouced playful and inventive elements to build a striking, visual USP for the brand.
Pack shots
If you sell to retail (directly or wholesale), you will certainly need a ‘front on’ pack shot of each of the variant products and flavours. Wholesalers and retailers will use these shots in catalogues, websites and promotional material. Pack shots can be hugely influential in developing product recognition and stimulating sales, so make sure they’re good quality and clearly display the core features of your product.
It’s good practice to have up to date food photography image libraries. If possible, create individual libraries for different uses: high resolution, 300dpi, CMYK for print and low resolution, 72dpi, RGB for digital.
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