In a nutshell, commercial photography means taking photos for commercial use. And by commercial we mean for business, for sales, for money. Commercial photography is often associated with advertisements, sales pitches, brochures, product placements as well as merchandising. Commercial photography is also used in business cards, corporate brochures as well as leaflets, menus, advertorials and press photos (those that you insert when sending out press releases or media blasts). There are various types of commercial photography, actually. And this is what we will discuss further in this article so do read on.
Selling a Product
Commercial photography can help sell a product. If you want to sell a product line or even individual products, you need to have great commercial photos. Either you want sharp commercial images – those that are sharp enough to be printed on newspaper adverts or brochures – or you might need photos that focus on the design of the product and any other feature of the product. For instance, you might want to highlight the iPad’s sleek rounded edges. On the other hand, you might need commercial images that focus on the use of the product.
Promoting a Business
This is pretty much self-explanatory. If you’re a businessman and you want to promote your firm, investments or any other businesses, then chances are you need commercial photos. You can then of course use these photos in flyers, tarpaulins or billboards. Media that can help promote your business. On the other hand, you can also use commercial photos of yourself. Yes, that’s right. You can have commercial photos of yourself and you can use those photos to promote your skills. This might sound a tad narcissistic for others but believe us when we say that this can really come in handy especially those who also want to be known personalities in their own right.
Another use of commercial photography is for food menus. When coming up with menus for a restaurant, chances are you’d need appetite inducing photos of the dishes or meals or fare that you intend to serve in your establishment. This is where the food photographs for menus come in. Apart from hiring skilled, highly professional photographers who have the knack and the eye in capturing great photo shots, you might also considering hiring food stylists. Here’s a very important reminder when you do commercial photography for food, though. Make sure that you capture real and true representations of the meal or dishes. Don’t “oversell” the dish by recreating an entirely different dish.
Did you also know that you can use commercial photography for both fashion photography as well as portrait photography purposes? For fashion photography, you would need commercial images for advertorials in magazines and perhaps for catalogues. Even clothes play a distinct role in commercial photography. Not only do they serve as “working props” but they also add dynamism to a photo and of course, you can also use the clothes as part of the advertisement. Now for portrait photography, you can mesh this with commercial photography. This interesting mix and balance more often than not happens during weddings. Wedding photographers can do portrait photography but can also do commercial photography in the sense that they can highlight the dress, the shoes, the tiara, the bouquet used by the bride and even the bride herself.
So as you can see, commercial photography has a lot of ways as well as purposes. Commercial photography can be used for just about anything you want to promote, really. Commercial photography can also be used for just about anything you want to downright sell or sell “subtlely” or below the line.
If you’re keen on embarking on this type of industry (commercial photography, that is), you might need to know that because of the demands in terms of photo structure, composition, possible lighting, styling etc, you might need a lot of equipment such as lenses, cameras, flashes and other photography studio equipment. So prepare to invest. And by invest we mean invest a lot. This way, you can make sure that you have enough equipment to show to your prospective clients when the time comes.
Now if you’re just on the lookout for possible commercial photographers, then why not check your local listings and see if there are photographers you can hire or photography studios you can check out. Commercial photography can be quite lucrative so for sure you will not have a problem in looking for great and professional commercial photographers in your area.
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