When the Brief Is Tricky: Solving Unusual Product Photography Challenges

The most interesting product photography briefs are usually the ones where someone says: “I’m not sure how this is going to work.”

Over 30 years of commercial photography you encounter a fairly wide range of products, locations and situations. Some are straightforward. Some are genuinely puzzling until you work them out. The ones that require a bit of problem-solving tend to produce the most satisfying results.

Here are a few examples of the kind of challenges we’ve encountered — and how we approached them.

A car fire extinguisher fitted under the seat

The brief was to show a fire extinguisher in its installed position under a car seat — a product shot that needed to be accurate and realistic rather than stylised. The problem: the camera needed to be squeezed in alongside the seat to show the product from the right angle, which left almost no room to position a light source anywhere useful.

The solution involved a combination of small, directional light sources placed in the limited space available, balanced carefully so the extinguisher was clearly lit without losing the context of where it sat. The resulting image shows exactly what a customer needs to see: the product in situ, clearly visible, properly lit. Not glamorous, but effective — and that’s what the client needed.

A dog guard — with actual dogs

Children and animals, as the saying goes. The product was a substantial car dog guard, and the brief required showing both that a pet could be reached from inside the vehicle and accessed via the boot — which meant photographing from multiple angles with models, dogs, and the product all in frame simultaneously.

The lighting challenge here was significant: we needed to light the subjects inside the car, the product itself, and — this sounds odd but it made a real difference — the green tree visible through the rear windscreen in the background. Without lighting the background, it would have gone dark and killed the sense of a real outdoor environment. With it, the whole image felt grounded and believable.

When studio becomes location — and location becomes studio

With automotive product photography, the distinction between studio and location blurs in interesting ways. We can and do bring vehicles into the studio — sometimes a window reflection or a mirror detail means the location background needs to be controlled regardless of where the car physically is. Equally, shooting on location often means building a mini-studio setup around the product, because the ambient or natural light simply isn’t doing the job.

A classic example: a black product against a dark interior background. Without adding light deliberately, there’s no separation, no definition, no image worth having. The answer is always the same — take control of the light rather than working with what you’ve got, wherever you happen to be.

The common thread

What all of these briefs have in common is that the solution came from understanding the problem first. The right lighting setup, the right camera position, the right approach to the environment — none of those can be decided before you’ve properly looked at what you’re dealing with. It’s why we always take time to assess a brief properly before we start setting up.

Got an unusual product photography brief? Tell us about it. The tricky ones are often the most rewarding.

For examples of our product photography work, take a look at our service page.

Related reading: Product Photography: What to Expect From a Professional Studio Shoot.