Bringing a new product to market requires more photography than most people initially budget for.
It’s not just one set of images — it’s several distinct types of photography, each serving a different purpose at a different stage of the retail and marketing process. Getting all of them right from the start saves significant time and money compared to commissioning them piecemeal as the need arises.
We worked with the team behind Point Fix — a self-setting pointing grout for block paving and patio tiles — on exactly this kind of complete product launch photography brief. Here’s how it broke down.
Stage one: colour and material photography
Point Fix comes in several colour options — buff, nutmeg brown and others. The first requirement was accurate photographic colour swatches: clean, consistent images of the powder itself that could appear on the product label alongside the colour name, making identification as clear and visual as possible.
These sound simple but require careful colour accuracy work. The image needs to show the actual colour of the product under conditions that translate accurately to print and screen — both of which render colour differently.
Stage two: product in use
To photograph the product being applied, we constructed a set in the studio using paving slabs and tiles — sourced from a garden supplier, selected personally by Julie for photographic suitability (she was, by the supplier’s account, extremely particular about which tiles she chose). The set needed to show enough of the surface to feel real and credible without the tiles themselves becoming distracting.
These in-use shots served two purposes: the main packaging image showing the product being brushed into place, and a sequence of instructional images showing the application process step by step — the kind of photography that appears on the back or side of the pack and helps convince a browsing customer that the product is easy to use.
Stage three: packshots on white
Once the client had used the first two sets of images to design and produce the actual packaging, we photographed the finished product on our white infinity scoop. Clean, accurate packshots on white are the essential workhorse image for any retail product — used in sales literature, on websites, in distributor catalogues and anywhere the product needs to be shown clearly without visual distraction.
Stage four: point of sale
The final stage was photographing the product in its packaging on display stands — showing how it would look at point of sale in a retail environment. These images were aimed at a B2B audience: the retailers and garden centres who needed to picture the product on their shelves. The images also incorporated photography from earlier stages, showing how a cohesive suite of images builds on itself through the process.
The lesson for product launches
Think about all the photography you need before you brief the first shoot — not just the hero packshot, but the in-use imagery, the colour references, the point of sale materials. If all of those can be planned into a coherent brief from the start, the process is more efficient, the visual language is more consistent, and you end up with a complete suite of assets rather than a collection of images commissioned at different times that don’t quite hang together.
Planning a product launch? Talk to us early — we’ll help you map out the full photography brief before a single shot is taken.
For examples of our product photography work, take a look at our service page.
Related reading: Launching a Leather Bag: Why Product Photography Is Critical at Startup.
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