Photos are everything for fashion brands. They can make or break an entire marketing campaign. They affect customers’ perception of a product line. More importantly, they can give your brand a good — or bad — name. In the age of quick snaps, filters, and a million editing apps, people have gone more meticulous about photos.
If you want your images to resonate with your audience, you must go back to the basics at what exactly makes a good fashion brand photo. With that in mind, you can pull the right strings and make a great impact on your audience.
Here are the elements that make the best fashion photos:
It tells a story.
Pictures don’t just tell a thousand words; they form a story. There’s a woman wearing a designer wedding dress in front of a dilapidated church, or someone sporting a high-fashion bucket hat while crossing the busy street. These images appeal to the audience precisely because the story they tell raises questions and spurs curiosity.
The longer that they look at your photos, the more that they see details that pull them in. That’s what you want: your audience so absorbed at your photo. How do you this? The key is to think of a concept that will best encapsulate the story you want to convey.
You should be able to summarize it in a single sentence or phrase — let’s say, streetwear in the urban jungle or vintage meets modern. If you can’t articulate in words what you want to see, chances are you won’t be able to bring it out in visual form. Partner with fashion photography experts for this step to home in on a good concept.
It communicates to the target audience.
Beyond relating stories, good fashion brand photos are relatable to its target audience. They tap into people’s aspirations, pain points, hobbies, and interests. Just observe athleisure brands, teasing people with fitspirations, or outdoor apparel products, giving people a good dose of wanderlust.
Your photos should also connect to your market, and this can only happen if you know exactly who your audience is. This doesn’t mean having knowledge of demographics, age, gender, profession, and marital status, though. You have to get into their psyche and know what makes them tick, who they look up to, why they shop, how they get offended, and many more.
With these insights, you’ll be able to decide better in terms of models to get (their looks and size), location to shoot at, even the amount of fashion photo manipulation you can do. Part of your planning for shoots should be a consideration of your target audience.
It aligns with the overall brand image.
Lastly, your photos should tie with your brand image. Nothing spells trouble than inconsistency in your collaterals. That just spells insincerity, which is a major blunder in this no-filter-obsessed era. Make sure to stick to your persona through and through. One way you can ensure this is to refer (or make) a mood board.
A mood board is a collection of images, texts, and other materials that evoke the exact feel of your brand. When you have this reference, you can channel it in the colors, fonts, and type of lighting you use in the brand photos. You can even reflect it in the marketing copies should you need it on your website, billboards, and social media.
Again, photos can make or break your fashion brand. There’s no way around this, but for you to stay relevant to your audience, you need to exude excellent aesthetics in your images. Go back to the basics to rediscover style.
