How to find locations for your product brand advertisement photoshoot

Location is one of the key factors for producing a successful photoshoot for any brand or business that sells a product. The location should align with your brand’s identity and not distract from what you’re trying to advertise.

When it comes to lifestyle photography and working with models, location scouting is an extremely important step in the pre-production process because you need to take into account factors such as lighting on the models face, the environment that the model can interact with, how busy certain outdoor locations will be, and more.

Flat-lay photography in a studio under a controlled environment is a great way to capture the details of a product and introduce certain props that help give clients an idea as to what your brand is about. But if you want to leave the studio and diversify your brand images with a photoshoot on-location, I hope this blog will be helpful in providing advice for your next brand shoot.

The beach in Santa Monica is one of my favorit locations to do lifestyle photoshoots with models.

Type of Location

Depending on your brand and the type of photoshoot you’re looking for, certain locations will make more sense as a backdrop for your product photoshoot than others. For example, it’ll probably make more sense to feature a swimwear brand at the beach rather than Downtown Los Angeles. If you are a backpack brand that focuses on adventure and travel, you might want to consider a photoshoot in the mountains rather than inside of a studio location.

It’s important to communicate with your photographer the concept of the photoshoot before fully committing to a certain location. I recently planned a lifestyle photoshoot that would be focused on adventure and outdoors with a backpack and watch. I ultimately decided on a trail around Griffith Park since the trees and mountains would be a beautiful backdrop and make sense for this type of shoot.

Location Scouting

Once you have a variety of locations in mind that will fit with the photoshoot, it’s important to try and visit the location during the time of the planned photoshoot. 

Being familiar with a location and scouting the area in advance can help you figure out not only what the lighting would look like before the photoshoot, but it can help you get a pretty good idea as to how crowded the location would be at the time of the planned shoot.

The beach near the Santa Monica Pier is usually very crowded during the evenings at sunset, and especially during the summer.

Time of Day for the Photoshoot

As a lifestyle photographer who shoots outdoors, the time of day is one of the most important things I consider when choosing a location. Depending on what kind of shot you’re trying to get, you need to be conscious of how the light is hitting the model’s face. If you set up your product shoot in the middle of a sunny day with a model, you’re going to get harsh shadows hitting the models face. This is something especially important to consider for clothing brands and jewelry brands.

One of my favorite locations for lifestyle photography (and for travel in general) is the beach. For two separate photoshoots, I shot the same beach location during sunrise and sunset. I already had in mind how the model’s face would be lit and how the product (earrings and watch respectively) would appear in the final image.

Final Notes

Whenever I work with a client for a photoshoot (whether they are local to Los Angeles or if they need to ship a product to my location), I always get on a call with them to talk about ideas for the photoshoot. I also try to include mood board images within the proposal so that they can see examples of my photography, as well as the location where their product will be shot.