Top Product Photography Trends in 2024

Never has professional quality imagery been more important when marketing and selling your product ranges. With more and more retail moving to online and the growth of social media platforms as shop windows, being able to convey your products accurately and attractively is high priority. Customer interaction and engagement is key in this digital sales environment.

65% of people are visual learners who will give more attention to any communications that contain imagery rather than text heavy sections. Content with images will receive on average, 94% more views than content without. In addition, people are more likely to remember information that is presented as an image, rather than any other way.

So what are the important trends to consider when planning your next marketing campaign or product launch, so that you can brief your photography studio or agency to create on trend imagery for your brand?

Lifestyle

Already popular with interior and homeware sectors, showing your product in 'real life' settings and natural scenarios is increasing in demand. Website marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay now strongly recommend this style of image in addition to more traditional "cut out" product shots for all listings.

This imagery has many benefits; when customers view your products they are not just buying an item, they are buying into a lifestyle. Making your imagery as aspirational as possible, and targeted at your key markets, will tap into their desires.

Showing products in a setting aids buyer confidence; more accurately conveying size and scale, as well as demonstrating suggested use.

Enabling the viewer to more accurately imagine your products in their own home will make their purchasing decision much easier.

Flat Lay

Use props, textures and background colours to enhance your products and create interesting compositions. A great way to showcase multiple related items from your ranges in a creative way.

Flat lays can be used for any product you can imagine. Often shot from above giving a birds-eye view to maximise the interplay between products. They can form striking graphic shapes, or be a little more natural, but are most successful as minimal "less is more" arrangements.

Alternatively drop the camera angle down a little to create depth and shadow that provides another layer of interest.

Wonderful for web banners and product pages, and striking on social media these powerful images are definitely worth adding to your portfolio.

Natural Lighting And Minimal Retouching

This is all about openness and trust. Customers want to know that what they are buying will look the same as your photography.

Your professional photography studio will be able to light your products in a way that resembles natural sunlight. Using this soft lighting technique creates an authentic, true to life, representation of how products will look in their own homes.

A light touch when it comes to post production is also welcomed by consumers who like fit and fabric appearance to be as realistic as possible. Image manipulation is an area to be treated carefully, balancing essential retouching with maintaining a genuine product representation.

Monochrome

An impactful trend that works for pretty much any product or photography style; matching backgrounds to product colour creating images of a single hue.

This trend creates a feeling of richness, luxury and comfort, and is particularly popular for food shoots as well as product.

Colour drenching is a growing trend for interiors, and this seems to be spilling over into other areas due to the eye-catching power of these images.

Where appropriate you can also bring in an element of colour psychology, matching your chosen colour to the mood you want to create around your product. Yellows and oranges spark joy and are uplifting and energising, whilst reds are long associated with passion. Go dark with blacks, plums and midnight colours to create a moody atmospheric image.