THE BLOG
Lifestyle Photography: A Secret Business-Boosting Weapon

Part 2
Continuing from the previous article, you can see how introducing lifestyle photography to your brand is definitely the way forward. From social media posts and advertisements to website imagery, it's the content you're currently missing, and desperately needing.

Read on to find out the remainder of our lifestyle photography tips. Before you know it, you'll be bringing your content to life!

Let's dive straight in from where we left off...
Pre-shoot organization tips
Before embarking on a shoot, of any kind, you will need to have an outline of what kind of photographs you'd like to have. You can have a look on Pinterest for inspiration, quirky ideas, and eye-catching ways to portray your products and brand. You'll need to arrange your props, the products that you'd like to include, and make sure that you have a spot in which there's good lighting, and know what you'd like your models to be doing.

For example, if you have a bakery, then you can set up a scene where there is a person celebrating their birthday. You can take shots of the cake being carried in, shots with the candles lit, where the birthday candles are being blown out, and the expressions on people's faces when they are eating the cake or feeding one another with it. This is integrating your product, the cake, and helping it to become alive within the shoot. It becomes a lived experience, one in which your audience not only is looking at the cake, but helps them to picture themselves ordering one of your cakes to celebrate their own birthday with.
What Kind and How Many Photos Should You Take

As the main key is authenticity and a genuine feel, you need to be shooting photos that encapsulate this. There is no specific number of photographs that have to be taken per shoot or per product, but you do need to be able to gauge the shots and how useful they can be as you go.

Bear in mind the dimensions for the platforms that you'd like to be posting them on, because if they will be used on your website, they may need to be of a different dimension to those images that will appear on your Instagram page.

Photo editing
Free versions of Lightroom and Photoshop can be downloaded and used on your smartphone and laptop. You can also use Pinterest to find free editing presets for each of these tools, which help to streamline the appearance of a series of photos - otherwise, there are packages that you can purchase these from to ensure that all the photos that you take have a similar look and feel. However, if you are happy with the photograph that you've taken and there's not much editing that is needed, then you can happily edit it by cropping or applying a filter from your smartphone too.
Optimise your images for different social networks and for easy social media posting
Where you are going to be posting your images is going to be crucial to bear in mind when you are taking the photos themselves. You'll need to know what dimensions are going to be most optimal for your chosen platform.

So for instance, you need to be shooting in a 1:1 ratio for Instagram and most Facebook posts. If you need to put together a Facebook event header, this will have a different dimension, and this will need to have a good idea of what will fit into the frame and how you would like to depict it. Depending on what your website image dimensions are, you will likely have to shoot in different dimensions too.

We look forward to seeing what you create! If you need any assistance, or want someone to shoot for you, then remember to get in contact with us at marketing@2fellasmedia.co.za!