Commercial Product Photography - Photographing Children's Toys

Commercial Product Photography - Photographing Children's Toys

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Who says that commercial product photography is no fun? It might not sound like a scintillating day when you're stuck photographing toilet cisterns all morning and then taking product images of 150 different types of sprockets in the afternoon, whatever they are, but there are good days. Such as photographing children's toys.

The UK's toy market is now valued at around 2.83 billion pounds a year, and in the last year alone it's grown by a massive six percent despite many families feeling the financial pressure of increased bills, taxes and other household costs. With such a vast array of children's toys coming on the market every day, and with such a wealth of retailers enjoying a slice of the action, it's critical that those involved in commercial product photography for children's toy retailers make sure that the product images stand out for all the right reasons.

Children are extremely good at spotting images - in fact they rarely look at the text, and almost certainly completely ignore the price. Children look at pictures, and they will happily latch on to those pictures which immediately stand out and grab their attention. Unfortunately too many retailers are lazy and simply use the stock images supplied by the manufacturer. Often though these sorts of images, apart from being of rather poor quality, only show what the product looks like. This is really only intended to be used by the retailers or the warehouses in managing stock, and invariably fail entirely to attract the attention of the target audience of children.

So how do those involved in commercial product photography manage to get great looking photographs of toys and children's products which do stand out, and look like being fun and value for money? It's worth remembering that a huge number of children's toys are nothing but a few lumps of plastic, a battery and some fur, and so taking a photograph of this and then charging a hundred pounds for it might not look terribly appealing. But through careful use of a range of tried and tested tactics commercial product photographers are able to turn something that might otherwise look overpriced into something that's irresistible and will get children clamouring and pestering their parents to buy it for them.

It's also worth remembering that often parents will browse through online catalogues looking for children's toys for birthdays and Christmas, and so will be looking for toys which seem to suit their children's character and interests. For example, let's take a bucket of plastic soldiers. If you just take the lazy way out you'll take a photograph of the bucket of soldiers. Great. How exciting. A bucket. And it's full of little bits of plastic. It's hardly inspiring to either parent or child.

But take those soldiers out, and set them up as though for battle, perhaps outside on a rockery or interesting patch of ground, and take the camera right down low on the ground with a wide angle lens taking a view from the child's point of view, and suddenly they come alive, and the child sees them as they would if playing with them, and the parents see something they can actually see their child playing with.

Girls' doll houses are the same. A dolls house on its own may look nice, but it's just a box. Open it up, decorate and furnish it, and perhaps have a girl playing with it, and the picture become more accessible, more real, and both child and parent can imagine it being in the home, and being used.

Commercial product photography is a varied career, and commercial photographers often have to spend hours photographing products which may not be terribly fun. But when your morning is spent playing with toy soldiers in the garden, or building Hogwarts Castle from Lego bricks, the job seems pretty worthwhile! Ultimately of course, this is time well invested as the product images will certainly stand out, and in a multi billion pound market that's fiercely competitive, standing out is the only way to survive.

About the Author:
For professional commercial product photography solutions from under 10 visit The Packshot People Ltd.



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