City Lifestyle Photoshoot in Downtown LA: Rhea Morales
Earlier in January, I did my first lifestyle photoshoot of 2025 with actress Rhea Morales. We had planned on doing a photoshoot in the city and around the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Downtown Los Angeles has been one of my favorite places to get some lifestyle branding photos in the city because of the mix of cityscapes, high-rise buildings, and interesting architecture that are all close to each other.
In this blog post, I'll be sharing how I went about photographing this lifestyle session and showing some of the edited final photos. All photos in this blog were captured with the Sony a7R III with the 85mm lens and the 35mm prime lens from Sigma. All photos were edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic.
Note: Bose actually featured one of the images from this photoshoot on their main website. You’ll see later in the blog post which photo it was. But this photoshoot was not done as an official photoshoot for Bose. The headphones were used only as an accessory for the lifestyle shoot.
Photo Locations In Downtown Los Angeles
I have taken photos around Downtown Los Angeles for years, but I always arrive early to the location before a photoshoot to figure out what location will work best. This part of the city features a variety of different textured buildings and backgrounds that would look great in a photo.
However, I think it’s important to be able to find as much versatility near one location as possible. As an outdoor photographer who mainly takes photos during golden hour, we would only have so much sunlight to work with.
The different wall textures of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the greenery of the nearby Downtown LA Blue Ribbon Garden patio was a perfect choice for these photos.
Downtown LA has a variety of different places to explore, but because we did the photoshoot on a weekday, we got lucky that the Blue Ribbon Garden was open. We were also fortunate that there weren’t a lot of people during the shoot.
In one part of the Blue Ribbon Garden, there is a nice view of the high-rise buildings in the city. Since I still wanted the photos to still be a clean portrait of Rhea with the headphones, the Sigma 85mm lens was a great choice to create nice compression without blurring the background too much.
HEADPHONES AS A TECH ACCESSORY FOR LIFESTYLE PHOTOS
Rhea came prepared with white Bose wireless headphones to use as a nice tech accessory and prop for these city-style photos. I have been wanting to use headphones for a photoshoot in Downtown LA so this was the perfect opportunity to get some great photos featuring electronics.
The wireless headphones are a simple white color but a perfect contrast to the darker colors of her hair and wardrobe. Moving around the concert hall, we went back and forth with having the headphones on and off between photos to give a bit of variety. But using the headphones as an accessory introduced versatile posing in the final images.
For any sort of lifestyle shoot, I have learned that having an accessory like wireless headphones can add to the narrative of the photoshoot, but too many accessories can start to overwhelm the photo and drown out the environment you’re photographing in.
LIFESTYLE PHOTOS IN NATURAL LIGHT
We had planned for the shoot to take place in the evening so there wouldn’t be any harsh lighting on her face in the photos. I also find that the golden hour colors you find during a sunset would look cinematic in a city-style photoshoot. Luckily, the weather was partially cloudy which allowed us to shoot at a variety of locations around the concert hall without having to worry about harsh lighting.
The biggest time restraint we had was just trying to get a variety of photos within an hour before the sun was gone. One of the greatest lessons I've learned as a street photographer is to be able to photograph quickly without compromising quality.
Final Words
As a street photographer, I always enjoy taking photos in Downtown Los Angeles because of the different backgrounds and textures you find in this part of the city. But as someone who also loves tech and travel, this lifestyle photoshoot was a joy to work on.
Rhea did a great job in working quickly and efficiently with the limited time that we had. As a creative director, I always want to make sure that the talent I work with feels like they can also be creative in their environment and that they get the photos they’re looking for, as well.
When shooting lifestyle product photography, you want to make sure that the environment makes sense for the product brand you are capturing. Wireless headphones can be pretty flexible as far as locations if you’re aiming for a travel narrative. You can get a model wearing the headphones anywhere outdoors.
And as promised, here is the image that was featured on the homepage of the Bose website. This photo was taken near the end of the session and is near the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
I like that it’s a simple photo with just the stairs from the concert hall as the location. A good lifestyle product image doesn’t have to have an incredibly elaborate background with thousands of dollars worth of lighting equipment.
If you’re a wireless headphones brand, or any sort of tech or travel brand looking for a lifestyle photoshoot or video shoot to promote your product, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to hear from you!
