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The Purpose of Product Shots

The purpose of product shots is simple. They are to make people buy the product. If they do not buy it, then at least they will retain a mental image of the product, and they may buy it when they have a need or desire for something similar. You may not be in the market for a gold cigarette lighter, for example, and even if you are, you are unlikely to buy them often, but Cartier’s advertising and PR ensure that their brand recognition is astonishingly high.

A much more interesting question is how a product shot helps to sell the product. No doubt, there are a few cases where sheer elegance of design, or even novelty, causes people to buy; but for the most part, the product shot must in some way epitomize the emotional appeal of the product. A headache cure must be clean, efficient, clinical. Bath gel must again be clean, but in a much less clinical sort of way; water splashed over the pack will make it look dewy-fresh and ready to use. Chocolates must look rich and inviting; a box of eggs must look farm-fresh and natural. Only rarely will a straight shot of a product do this, which is why lighting and (in many cases) the choice of props can be so important.

At this point, one is sliding into the “lifestyle” type of shot. Rather than just showing a few shotgun shells on a sheet of background paper, one puts them on weathered wood to suggest the country look; and perhaps adds a brace of grouse to convey the message that if you buy this particular sort of ammunition, you will regularly hit everything you aim at. Then there might be part of a gun in shot. People are often astonished at the amount of trouble and expense which goes into building an apparently trivial campaign, but there is no doubt that if you do it properly, advertising gets results.

Finally, there are times when the sole function of a product shot is to break up what would otherwise be a featureless text-only advertisement, or (at best) to confirm its appearance. If, for example, you were advertising table-top photocopiers, you might want to have your product in the advertisement. Why? Partly for visual variety; partly because advertisers have a weakness for putting procures of their products into their advertising, not matter how dull those products may be; and partly to confirm that it is genuinely of table-top size. This is the sort of shot where the above-mentioned multi-coloured gels can render a dull subject less dull.