We get a lot of emails asking about lifestyle photography pricing, and they tend to be from customers who are new to this type of photography, so we decided to write this guide to lifestyle photography to those who are interested on what it is, how it works, and how much it costs.
Lifestyle photos are photos of your product in some sort of setting or scene that suggests how the product can be used. For example if your product in a frying pan, a lifestyle photo would be one that shows someone cooking a delicious dish with the pot in a beautiful kitchen.Lifestyle photos help the customer imagine how the product would serve them, and definitely they do help sell products. You can use them in product listing, content, social media posts etc.
There are 3 ways to create lifestyle photos:
1. Work on spec. This is where the client specifies exactly what is needed in terms of setting, props, lighting etc and the result is very close to the spec.
Advantages: the client gets the exact image they envisioned, and also it is a unique set-up and no one else will have it
Disadvantages: Expensive, as everything is custom, slow to produce
Price: US$500+ per photo, and can easily go into the thousands depending on the exact requirements. Most freelance photographers can do this type of photos. We don't take on this kind of assignments, but most freelance photographers do.
2. Give a basic brief and let the photography team do what they can with what is available in the props and settings on site.
Advantages: cheaper than work on spec, results are pretty good
Disadvantages: you won't get the perfect images that you wanted in your vision
Price: US$50+. Our standard and pro product launch packages includes lifestyle photos.
3. Pick a stock photo and put the product in the stock photo in post-production
Advantages: can work great if a suitable photo can be found
Disadvantages: time-consuming to find a photo that matches your style and that is suitable for the retouch job. If the post-production is not well managed the photo can look super fake.
We don't offer this service at the moment.
