Different types of photography that can boost your brand

High-quality photography has become essential for businesses looking to stand out, engage with audiences and build a strong presence. The rise of social media has created a visually driven world where we crave eye-catching and inspiring imagery across all channels, from websites to printed ads. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by your business's photography requirements. Likewise, panic booking a photographer without a plan can feel like the solution! Neither is beneficial to building a brand.  

No matter your industry, the right imagery can help you leave a lasting impression - let’s dive in. 

Photography types for businesses

Headshots / portrait photography

Professionally captured headshots for you and your team can be a great way to give your online presence a personal feel. Showcasing the friendly faces behind your brand makes you more approachable and the creative style you choose for your portraits helps to reinforce your brand’s identity.

Portrait photography is the art of not just capturing a person’s appearance, but also their personality and mood. The lighting, composition, camera settings, posing and backdrop can all be used creatively to produce portraits with a desired look and feel. 

A good photographer must have strong interpersonal skills in order to make you (the subject) feel comfortable in front of the camera.

Product photography 

Good product photography clearly highlights an item’s quality, features and benefits in a way that’s visually appealing and true to life. If effective, your product photography will help build brand trust, enhance your customer experience and ultimately drive sales. 

Most commonly you will find products shot on undistracting backgrounds but the possibilities are endless and photographers can get creative with lighting, set building and post-production techniques that bring products to life in eye-catching ways.

You’ll see product photography almost everywhere you go in reality and online. It's vital for marketing and advertising materials and essential in the world of e-commerce. Over 80% of the UK’s population shop online* and that’s only due to increase, so it’s worth investing in high quality product photography. 

*Source: Statista

Lifestyle photography

Whatever product or service you offer, lifestyle photography captures people and products in ways that are intended to feel like real-life scenarios. It takes things out of the studio and places more emphasis on the ‘why,’ evoking emotion through visual storytelling by featuring your product or service, the environment, and people in a candid manner intended to inspire. Lifestyle photography enriches your brand image, often associating it with an activity, hobby or way of life that people aspire to.

The key to successful lifestyle photography is capturing unposed moments that feel authentic while maintaining appealing compositions. If a physical product is involved, it will be a key element that has to look its best, but not necessarily the main focal point for each image. 

Food Photography

The aim of food photography is to make food and drink look as delicious as possible, highlighting textures and suggesting flavours using styling, lighting and composition techniques to get people’s tastebuds tingling! 

Styling is an important aspect of food photography, in addition to making the food itself look good, building a scene around a dish to include props, raw ingredients, texture and colour can create a mood that aligns with your brand or the story behind the dish. From messy and indulgent bakes to moody gourmet dishes, food photography offers a broad scope for creativity.

Top tip: Depending on your budget, it can be a wise investment to bring in a specialist food stylist. The collaborative approach between stylist and photographer can lead to some Michelin star creativity - but it does mean there’s one more mouth to feed when you’ve wrapped the shoot and it’s time to tuck in! 

Property photography

High-quality property photography requires careful composition, attention to detail and accurate perspectives to create inviting imagery of a property’s rooms and features internally and externally. 

Property photography is a broad genre as residential, commercial and industrial property can be captured for property sales, marketing or advertising purposes - architecture also attracts artistic photographic approaches such as abstract and brutalism. 

A property photographer often uses wide angle lenses to emphasise a space, balancing exposure (or multiple exposures) and using post-production techniques to portray the ambience of a space in an informative yet visually appealing way. 

Fun fact: the art of using artificial lighting (flashes) in property photography to compliment natural ambient light from windows and fittings is often referred to as ‘flambient lighting’.

Editorial photography

Editorial photography focuses on capturing a series of images to tell a story or convey a theme, often accompanying written content in magazines, blogs or articles. 

This style of photography steers away from the obvious forms of commercial photography and focuses more on visual storytelling but that doesn’t mean it won’t add value to your brand. Customers crave authentic content that inspires, so editorial photography can do a lot to reinforce your content marketing objectives. It can include a mix of portrait, lifestyle, landscape and detail imagery. 

Editorial photographers use a wide range of creativity within lighting, composition and post-production to produce visually engaging content that’s aimed at supporting a narrative or mood. 

Top tip: You’ll often find great examples of editorial photography in lifestyle and fashion magazines, or on the blogs of your favourite brands, so have a browse for inspiration. 

Event photography

Whether it’s a corporate event, music festival or your aunt’s 60th birthday, a photographer’s aim when capturing an event is to document the atmosphere, key moments, and emotions of the occasion in a natural and engaging way. 

Event photography can often be high-paced and high-pressure; reacting to dynamic environments, variable lighting conditions and anticipating important moments such as speeches, performances or candid interactions. Depending on the occasion, a photographer will capture a varied range of images, everything from posed and candid portraits through to artistically documenting details of the venue and surroundings. 

Businesses can benefit from high-quality event photography by showcasing the energy and success of their events on social media and promotional materials, as well as preserving memories for future generations.

Drone photography

Looking for a change in perspective? Drone photography allows for an aerial approach to a scene, capturing breathtaking bird’s-eye views and panoramas. Drone photography is an impactful way to capture buildings, large scale projects and sprawling landscapes but requires specially trained or qualified operators to fly. 

Drone photography has revolutionised the way we capture photography and video, unlocking access to stunning aerial imagery that was once only afforded by those with helicopter sized budgets! 

Brand photography

Businesses need a surprising amount of impactful visuals in order to fill websites and marketing materials. And let’s face it, stock photography will only take you so far! Branding photography is less a genre of photography and more a mixture of portrait, lifestyle, workspace, behind-the-scenes and product photography - all tailored to create a bank of bespoke content that aligns with (or creates) your brand identity. 

High quality branding photography will result in images that reflect a brand’s personality, values, and story, helping to establish a strong and recognisable presence across marketing materials, websites, and social media. 

Branding photography days can be a lot of fun! Get ready to be the star of the show, nothing adds personality to a brand like seeing the faces behind it all.  

So, what next? 

Now we’ve run you through the types of photography available for your business, here are a few steps you can take to understand your photography requirements, create content plans and look forward to some exciting shoot days. 

• Look at what your competitors are doing (or not doing!).
• Audit your website - what content is outdated or could use a refresh? 
• What type of photography will highlight your product, physical or otherwise? 
• Consider how you can add personality and visual appeal to your brand.
• What questions are you often asked and how can photography answer those? 
• Create social media content plans.

We’re here to help 

If you need support fine-tuning your photography requirements, get in touch. From creative conception and planning, to capturing the moments that count, our professional photography services can be tailored to you and your business.