Creative product photography: techniques, ideas & inspiration | Omi.so

Creative product photography is your edge in a crowded market. Standout visuals don’t just showcase your products — they tell stories and evoke emotions, helping to forge connections between customers and your brand.

With the right creative techniques, you can transform ordinary shots into captivating scenes for your social media, eCommerce listings, and seasonal marketing. Here, we share some creative product photography ideas, setups, and tools — like Omi — that you can use to craft unforgettable visuals across platforms.

The importance of creative product photography

Creative product photography captures attention, conveys brand identity, and transforms browsers into buyers. It helps you to:

Stand out in a crowded market

Unique visuals catch the eye amidst a sea of similar product photos. With distinctive, imaginative photography, your products are distinguished from competitors. Creativity makes the difference between blending in and becoming a must-see.

Enhance brand storytelling

Creative photography doesn’t just showcase your products; it tells your brand’s story. Thoughtful compositions, colors, and settings embed identity into your product lines and marketing channels. This engages customers and conveys the exact impression you’re looking to achieve. 

Boost engagement and conversions

Compelling eCommerce product photography turns a quick glance into genuine interest and interaction. Customers captivated by your images are more likely to click, share, and explore further, increasing the likelihood of conversions. (Omi clients see as much as a 19% increase on conversion rate.)

Innovative techniques in product photography

Use these cutting-edge techniques to breathe life into your product photos.

Flat lay photography

Endro Cosmétiques uses flat lay photography to add style and character to its seasonal product offerings, generated via Omi.

Flat lay photography is hugely popular on social media. Think of a typical “what’s in my bag” Story. 

For product photography, a flat lay provides a clean, organized way to showcase products from above. Think, for example, of a collection of skincare products arranged with fresh flowers and towels to evoke a spa-like feel. Imagine, alternatively, a flat lay of travel essentials like sunglasses, sunscreen, and a passport to create a sense of adventure.

This style is ideal for beauty brands like Endro Cosmétiques that often use this technique to highlight their product lines and to refresh their imagery for seasonal campaigns. 

It’s also a go-to for food brands showcasing ingredients, tech brands displaying gadgets and accessories, and fashion brands laying out clothing and accessories in styled combinations.

With Omi’s Virtual Studio (more on this below), you can easily create flat lays at scale, choosing from hundreds of scene templates, or rotating the virtual camera to above, assuming your product is sitting on a surface. 

Floating objects

Panier des Sens (to the right) experimented with floating objects for their creative photography.

Floating objects in product photography create an illusion of weightlessness and surrealism. By making products appear to hover, you can highlight details from all angles while creating visual interest. 

Floating object shots are difficult to pull off with traditional photography but they’re exceptionally easy to achieve in Omi’s Virtual Studio. Once your 3D items are placed, switch out background colors or scenes, or use a white background paired with dynamic lighting to create varied, interesting images. This technique is perfect for product photographers and brands looking to infuse their visuals with an unexpected twist.

Creative use of lighting and reflections

The right lighting and reflections bring depth and intrigue to product photos — transforming flat scenes into dynamic, layered visuals. Subtle shadow play can emphasize product shape and texture, while reflections add sophistication and depth, and create a high-end feel. 

In Omi’s Virtual Studio, it’s easy to adjust lighting and experiment with different effects. This lets you fine-tune your designs for perfect, sexy visuals. Lighting and reflections are incredibly versatile and improve both the realism and artistic appeal of your renders.

3 ways to level-up your creative product photography

With the right styling and setting, you can transform your product photography. Here’s how.

1) Choose the right props

Who doesn’t like grilled octopus? Using Omi.so, Moët Hennessy Wine Estates ordered 3D models not just of their products — but of scene props! That meant they had lemons, octopus arms, artisan urns, and even oysters at their disposal. That way they could level up their product photography while making sure the brand assets used in scenes were pre-approved. Clever, no doubt.

Props and accessories enhance product photography by demonstrating how your product might be used and adding context that resonates with your audience. For example, a pumpkin evokes the feeling of fall or pinpoints a Halloween campaign, while a coffee mug beside a notebook suggests a cozy, productive setup. Props are also useful for showing scale — helping customers to visualize the size of your product.

Omi’s Virtual Studio includes access to an extensive template library of objects like these. Browse and add or swap props in your photos to quickly create customized scenes that highlight your product’s purpose and appeal.

2) Set the scene with the right backdrop

Backgrounds set the mood and emphasize your product’s appeal. A wooden, textured background might cultivate a sense of warmth and rustic charm, while a tiger print pattern adds energy and drama, and draws the eye. 

Customizing product photography backgrounds in Omi is simple (yes, that includes variety in your white background photography). Enter the Virtual Studio, where you can experiment with textures, colors, and patterns to find the perfect setting for each product.

3) Play with advanced lighting techniques

Here, Esthederm uses light to reveal a new product, which had been promoted with teaser images for weeks. As you can see, they made good use of Omi's video add-on.

Lighting transforms the look and feel of a product image by bringing depth, mood, and focus. A product photographer might use advanced techniques like spotlighting to create a dramatic effect and soft lighting to imbue warmth and comfort.

In Omi’s Virtual Studio, you have full control over lighting, allowing you to experiment with various styles to find the ideal ambiance. This makes it easy to highlight product details, cultivate mood, and create standout visuals that capture attention.

Adapting creative photography for different platforms

An eCommerce listing looks different from social media creative, and for good reason. By tailoring product photos for different platforms and channels, you ensure they’re fit for purpose, meet platform criteria, and are optimized to engage audiences.

Social media

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest call for engaging visuals that capture attention and stop people scrolling. Try complementary colors like electric blue against orange, capture extreme close-ups that highlight textures, or arrange products in suspended patterns with seasonal elements like autumn leaves. These techniques help your products stand out, while maintaining consistent styling reinforces your brand identity.

With Omi, you can easily create product photos for social media and ensure a consistent look and feel for these channels (even if you want variety and creativity). Besides the design elements and templates available in the Virtual Studio, Omi allows you to export photos and videos to the correct aspect ratios and design format needed for Reels, Posts, Stories, and more.

eCommerce 

On eCommerce websites, it’s key to balance creativity with clarity so that products are both appealing and accurately represented. Creative elements like shadows, accessories, colors, or complementary backgrounds provide depth and personality. However, the main focus should be showcasing the product clearly (more than creatively) — especially for your white background product photography, which is the design of choice for most shopping carts and sales-oriented images. Header banners often have looser creative boundaries because they tend to serve thematic or navigational purposes, like showcasing the product range the visitor can expect on the page.

Omi’s tools for eCommerce product photography make it easy to create high-quality images that capture detail and engage online shoppers. It’s never been easier to launch new products to your store (Omi even syncs with Shopify using an integration). 

There’s also a 3D Viewer that makes your product display interactive, letting your customers zoom in on product details and spin it to take in all angles. This increases their confidence in the purchase, helping with conversions and return rates.

Advertising campaigns

Your ad images need to make an instant impact and communicate your product’s value at a glance. High contrast, bold colors, and strategic composition are crucial for capturing attention, be it via digital banners, billboards, or magazine spreads. 

Creative lighting techniques can emphasize key features, while clean, powerful backgrounds help your product photos stand out. And Omi makes it easy to tailor your visuals to the specific format — whether a website banner ad or a full-page print spread.

And needless to say — video is a guaranteed eye-catcher in creative product photography. Omi’s video add-on lets you animate your Virtual Scenes by moving objects, lighting, and camera. Check out some gorgeous videos for product launches here.