Lifestyle photography is a style of photography that aims to capture real people in real life situations in a creative & artistic manor to illustrate their everyday. The primary goals being to tell stories about people’s lives & inspire the viewer.

Lifestyle photography is not simply a portrait in a particular setting. It’s photos that encapsulate a bigger picture, that tell the story behind the person or people featured. Lifestyle photography may include landscapes, buildings & architecture, objects, items, events & actions, anything that is an important piece to the story.

So how does lifestyle photography translate into business photography?

Business lifestyle photography is simply using photography to tell the story of your business. To show your clients & customers who you are, what you do, where you do it & how you do it.

But why use photos to tell my story, aren’t words enough?

I could roll out the cliche “An image speaks a thousand words…” again. But there’s much more to it than that.

Today’s society, with the rise of photo sharing social media platforms, is very image savvy. It’s estimated that 93% of all human communication is visual.

Consider for a moment, when did you last read a blog post or online article with nothing to look at or engage with a post on Facebook without an image? The simple stat that Facebook posts that include images get 53% more likes & 104% more comments than those that are just words shows us how important photos are in online marketing (Source: Mike Gingrich).

Photos give your clients & customers an opportunity to see you & your business in action, without actually being there, a little peep behind the scenes if you like! (And lets be honest, we’re all a little nosy & like to see what goes on behind closed doors!) It gives them an opportunity to see what you do & how you do it. It gives you the opportunity to show the care, skill & attention you give to your service or product.

Cakes by Caroline is a bespoke cake baker. In her behind the scenes shoot we showed the finishing touches being made to one of her cakes. She wanted to show that each cake was unique and particular care was made to even the tiniest of details.

Many business lifestyle shoots are linked with with a website re-design or a re-branding exercise & a desire to make a business more image friendly.

The first stage is to sit down & discuss what you are looking to achieve. What is the story that you are wanting to tell? What message are you wanting to share with your clients? How do you want you & your business to be portrayed in the photos? We like to get a full & through understanding of your business & together we will brainstorm ideas that encapsulates your message in a photo or series of photos.

If we are linking your shoot to a website redesign we will ask to see a site map & if possible speak to the designers so that we can see the flow of the site & how images are going to be used.

Once we know your individual story we will work with you to create a storyboard for your shoot. This is essential preparation; mapping out what photos we want to ensure that we get the right images to illustrate your story. Whilst there is a degree of engineering to create the photos, this is more to ensure the best results for you, rather than to alter the story.

A truly genuine ‘reportage’ approach would not influence the outcome of the photos in any way, simply capturing what happens ‘as it happens’. Whilst more authentic, this may not deliver the goods for your business as there is little control over light, location or even what happens.

And then, all that is left to do is shoot! We usually spend up to a day, immersing ourselves in your business, becoming a part of your team, telling your story.

Case Study

Building a new website, Coachworks wanted a series of behind-the-scenes images showing their team at work that they could use on the site & also in a series of blogs & social media posts to make themselves stand out from their competitors & show why they were one of the market leaders in their field.

Just to finish off, if you are not convinced by the importance of photos & images on your website, one last stat for you:

So the message is simple, use photography & make those images count!

Every business story is different, please contact us for a chat about what story you want to tell & for a bespoke quote.