Types of Commercial Photography with Image Examples
Commercial photography is a broad genre of photography, in which photos are used to promote the product or service of a business.
Within the scope of commercial photography, advertising photography captures the essence of this product or service through storytelling and serves the purpose to create an emotional connection with the intended audience. Advertising campaigns are an essential marketing tool that you can use to promote your brand across print and digital platforms.
There are plenty of niches within commercial photography that can feature advertising campaigns, some of which overlap with each other. In this post, I’ll be going over some examples of commercial photography niches that you might find with image examples:
Architectural Photography
Automotive Photography
Corporate & Headshot Photography
Fashion Photography
Food & Beverage Photography
Hotel & Resort Photography
Lifestyle Photography
Product Photography
Architectural Photography
Architectural photography involves capturing exterior shots of buildings and properties for clients such as architectural firms and designers. For this style of photography, you’ll want to work with a photographer who is able to master composition with a wide-angle lens.
Automotive Photography
Automotive photography is an essential marketing tool for car dealerships and luxury car brands. This niche involves photographing cars, detailed close-ups of car features, and lifestyle images of models for advertising campaigns.
Corporate & Headshot Photography
Commercial photography within the corporate landscape provides useful marketing media content for service-based businesses. Commercial corporate photographers can capture headshots, group photos, office photos, and candid branding lifestyle photos featuring your team in action.
Rather than using stock photos as a placeholder for your website and social media content, original corporate photography is customized to your brand image, can build trust and promote your business to potential customers authentically.
Fashion Photography
Fashion photography involves capturing clothing brands and fashion accessories (watches, jewelry, handbags, etc.) in order to promote your brand.
This niche can feature a mix of e-commerce photos and lifestyle photography, both of which are useful in diversifying your media content across marketing platforms. Fashion photography is featured not only on brand websites and social media pages, but also commonly in editorial magazines and lookbooks.
Fashion photography will generally feature models wearing the designs or products as a way of showcasing the products and acts as a necessary tool for advertising campaigns.
Food & Beverage Photography
This style of photography involves promoting food and beverage products, as well as packaging. While this niche commonly falls under the umbrella of product photography, you can also add lifestyle images with models eating/drinking the product for a greater range of images to advertise.
Commercial food and beverage photography can be helpful for food and beverage brands, restaurants and bars, hotels and other hospitality businesses.
Hotel & Resort Photography
These images focus on a mix of interior and exterior photos to capture the amenities for each hotel or resort property. Deluxe suites, outdoor pools, restaurants and bars - you’ll want to work with a photographer who is able to work in a timely manner to capture different rooms within your timeframe.
For more high-end photography services, hotel and resort brands might want to consider hiring on-camera talent to capture lifestyle photos on their property, with models acting as guests. Hotel and resort clients can also feature their employees for additional lifestyle photos.
LIFESTYLE PHOTOGRAPHY
As mentioned in other niches on this list, lifestyle photography captures candid moments that promote a product or service (usually done with the help of on-camera talent).
Product Photography
Product photography involves capturing detailed images of the product itself. Product photography is commonly shot in a studio with a neutral background and are used for e-commerce and product pages.
Lifestyle product photography utilizes props and models to show the product in use.
Beyond food & beverage and fashion photography, you can do product photography for industries like tech products, skincare, fragrances, and more.
Commercial Photographer Skills
There are plenty of different niches you can find within commercial photography. Regardless of the speciality that you might be looking for, there are some general skills that a commercial photographer will want to have for any commercial photoshoot:
Pre-Production Planning: An ability to communicate with the client what to include in a photoshoot that is tailored to their business. Sometimes, this comes in the form of a shot list or mood board.
Proper Equipment for the Niche: From wide-angle compositions to macrophotography, commercial photographers might need to use specific camera equipment in order to get the necessary photos for a particular niche.
Understanding of Lighting: Depending on if the photoshoot will take place outdoors or at the client’s place of business, an understanding lighting (natural light, continuous light, flash, etc.) is imperative.
Post-Production & Retouching Expertise: The use of post-production and retouching will differ depending on your niche. Knowledge of retouching a model’s face differs from the knowledge of retouching reflexive jewelry products.
Creative Direction: Most notably helpful for fashion and lifestyle photoshoots, photographers might need experience in directing models to capture a certain aesthetic that fits the client’s brand.