The Art of Successful Catalogue Photography

A great place to start for up and coming photographers who want to make it in fashion is catalogue photography. Catalogue photography is an element of commercial photography and is still used by many retailers as an effective and efficient way to market products, especially fashion lines.

Catalogues for many years where the ultimate showcase for a business product portfolio. The glossy pictures in the big, chunky magazine allowed a relaxing, unpressured way of viewing a company’s products from the comfort of their own home. However, the phenomenal boom of the internet has produced a dip in the popularity of catalogues, with consumers opting to use a faster, quicker form of shopping. Despite this dip, internet and catalogue marketing has made an unexpected combination. Online purchases are still riding high in terms of popularity but catalogues are still a brilliant way to initially discover a company and browse through.

The photographs you see in catalogues are a crucial element to a business’s marketing campaign, especially within fashion where often, the perception of the product by the consumer is usually based entirely on a picture.

At times, this sort of photography can seem slightly repetitive shooting certain lines of clothing against a white background for all the editing to occur after the shoot is over. However, depending on the shoot, catalogue photography can take you all over the world. For example, shooting swimwear in the tropics or ski wear somewhere snowy!

Catalogue photography is a great way to improve your existing photography skills and build the foundation for your portfolio. For example, online shopping is becoming increasing popular, as unlike catalogues you can view the products whenever you like and order them instantly, this is an area catalogue photography allows you to expand into.

Catalogue photography can be a long process of preparation before the shoot initially will begin. This ranging from extensive research into the product prior to it being shot, to sourcing the right props, allocating the right settings, providing all the right lighting and using a creative insight to be able to pull it all together. A good commercial photographer should apply knowledge and technique to the equipment in hand to try and capture the expectation applied by the client. The aim of the shoot if to create a stream of photographs that can market the products. Photography can be used as a key advertising tool and ultimately boost the clients sales.

Lyndon Miles writes on many issues, this is a series of articles written about catalogue photography.

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