How do you set up tomorrow's studio?
More and more brands and e-commerce companies decide to set up their own photo studio for product photography! But why is this? One of the main reasons, as I see it, is that images has become a crucial part of the product development process. I.e. product photography is, simply put, part of the value chain.
And many companies are struggling to understand what they need to produce in terms of images. They also struggle with defining the requirements on product photography. This is probably the main factors why so many companies insist that they want to do it in-house
What are the requirements on a modern photo studion?
In order to understand this we must look at what the driving forces are on companies that aim to succeed online. Then we need to see how these business needs translate do the requirements on a photo studion. After that, we can determine the actual impact on the studio. Here are som of the more critical requirements that we have identified when talking to customers and experts:
- Shorter time from design to market, i.e. Time To Market
- More channels to deliver images to
- More information about the image and its content
- Not just images but Video and 3D
In todays market, the life span of a product is constantly shrinking and thus it is important to cut the time from design to having the product on-line to sell. And in the on-line store then image is the same as the product on the shelf.
What does all this mean for the studio?
1. Shorter time from design to market
In todays market, the life span of a product is constantly shrinking and thus it is important to cut the time from design to having the product on-line to sell. And in the on-line store then image is the same as the product on the shelf.
For the studio, this means that they must be prepared when the sample reaches the studio. They should already have a plan for the photo shoot and know how to shoot what inmages.
2. More channels to deliver images to
Todays marketing requires us to perform in many other channels than our own webbshop. This may be Amazon or Zalando or other types of market places. Also, this is shifting with new places popping up that makes it important to ad new channels on the fly.
For the studio this means that they need to be more flexible and adaptable. They need to be able to create many more variants of the same image to serve many more purposes and even be able to shoot channel specific images.
3. More information about the image and its content
When shooting products the studio gathers a lot of information that isn’t visible on the product. This is information that the rest of the organisation could really benefit from. For example, if you shoot a model it would be great if you could easily add information about the other products that the model wears. Or add information about how tall the model is or what size is actually used in the studio.
For the studio this means that they need to store this information and figure out a way to add this information to the image without creating an administrative nightmare.
4. Not just images but Video and 3D
In todays marketplace the need to use video is becoming more and more common. Also, in some cases 3D models are used to create visuals. Video is becoming more and more common and the process of creating video is similar (however not exactly the same) to image photography, one main difference is the video requires fixed lightning.
For the studion, both these asset types will create more work for the studio and demand new process (workflows) to produce. They will furthermore require new skillsets to manage. Also, shooting video and images in the same rigging will require the studio to move from flash light to fixed light on both images and video to keep the same look and feel.
