Quality, authentic lifestyle photos that showcase people in everyday situations are extremely popular on stock photo websites. As a photographer, this presents a great opportunity to make money with Vecteezy’s contributor program.
Stock photos featuring people are relatively easy to find. However, today’s users want photos that look genuine. Business owners, marketers, and designers don’t want to use photos with a stereotypical stock photo look (like the cover photo of a math textbook from 1992).
Capturing quality lifestyle photos will take a little bit of effort, but your photos will be downloaded more frequently and you’ll make more money. By planning out your sessions effectively, you’ll be able to come away with outstanding photos that will meet a huge demand.
Here are six specific ideas you should consider to ensure your success with taking lifestyle photos.
Related: 9 Types of Stock Photos That Sell
1. Personality and Model Choice
The models you photograph will have a huge impact on the results of your lifestyle photos. Be sure you’re working with models who are comfortable in front of the camera in order to get natural-looking photos.
The model should be able to relax and show real emotions without looking forced and awkward. Look for big personalities and expressive people. If you’re photographing models that are uncomfortable, tense, or stiff in front of the camera, the results won’t be what you’re looking for.
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2. Setting
Where will you be shooting photos? Lifestyle photos are best when they’re done in realistic yet intriguing settings. This could include inside a home, an office, in the backyard, at a park, in the city, in a coffee shop, at the gym, at the beach, at a lake, etc.
Some settings will be easy and very accessible. In other cases, you might need to do a little bit of extra work, like getting permission from a coffee shop owner. Keep in mind that putting in some extra work may allow you to capture photos that help you to stand out as unique.
Ideally, you’ll be able to photograph in many different settings in order to add diversity to your portfolio.
3. Lighting
Lighting is important for any type of photography. The best option for taking high-quality lifestyle photos is to use natural light. Lifestyle photos taken in natural light will have the most authentic and genuine look, rather than feeling like they were captured in a photo studio.
Of course, the use of natural light means your work will be impacted at least in part by the weather, especially if you’re shooting outdoors. By watching the weather forecast and using some flexibility, you can work with or around the weather. Keep in mind that different types of weather are ideal for taking different types of photos. In general, you can expect great results when the weather is partly cloudy to overcast. Direct sunlight tends to result in squinting eyes and undesirable reflections in your images.
Natural light can also be used indoors. Open the windows and doors to let the natural light in, and you may also want to use a reflector to bounce the light onto your subject.
4. Clothing
The clothes your models wear will have a big impact on the end result of your photos. As a rule, you should always avoid clothing with logos and distracting graphics. Unless you are going for a specific and intentional look, you should also ask models to remove jewelry and accessories.
Think about the ways people might use your photo and the types of clothing they would want a person to be wearing. For example, do you want models to wear business or casual attire? The people who end up using your photos are likely to have something specific in mind.
Additionally, it’s ideal to provide several outfits (or have models bring a few) so they can change clothes midway through the shoot. This will give your photos more variety within each shoot, and you’ll be more effective at meeting the needs of users by providing greater options. You can even capture the same or very similar photos with the model wearing different clothing. In fact, this is a great way to increase the number of resources you upload to Vecteezy with minimum extra effort.
5. Actions
Lifestyle photography is all about capturing people within the context of their life. The model could be reading a book, working at a desk, talking to a friend, playing with their kids, exercising, or enjoying a nice meal.
To come away with the best photos, plan the actions you’ll want to capture in your sessions. You could focus the shoot on one particular theme, like a family playing together at the beach, or mix it up and capture several different actions throughout the session. Storyboard your shots! It’s difficult to remember all your ideas in the moment, but if you take the time to make notes or sketch out your photos you can blast through many ideas in a short period of time.
Try to keep models comfortable so the actions look and feel genuine rather than forced or posed. Bring a snack and water to keep spirits high. If you are shooting photos of multiple models interacting together, think about ice breakers or conversation topics you can use to get them talking naturally together.
6. Shoot Both Vertically and Horizontally
While you’re photographing, try to capture each shot in both portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) orientation. Users are likely to need photos in a specific orientation so you’ll have the best chance of meeting his or her needs if you can offer both. As an example, website banners typically need to be horizontal, while photos for social media might be better to shoot vertically. It’s easy to overlook the need for this while you’re shooting, so you’ll probably need to make a conscious effort to keep changing it up until it becomes a habit.
Conclusion
High-quality lifestyle photos are always in demand, so photographing people is a great way to make more money as a Vecteezy contributor. By putting these tips into practice, you’ll be able to come away with lots of amazing photos that are likely to be downloaded over and over again.
Lead photo by tidty33936976.
