Fashion lookbook photography is one of the trendy promotional tools for the e-commerce fashion industry.
The lookbook is the best option if you plan to launch new products or gather your collection in one place.
With the notable growth of the global digital market, lookbook photography has become the most appealing way to convey brands’ vision and motivate the audience to purchase the products.
But what to include in a lookbook? How do you utilize compelling fashion lookbook photography for your e-commerce? There are more things you should know about this while creating the lookbook. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the complete guide to use lookbook photography in your business.
What is a Fashion Lookbook?
A fashion lookbook is a visual collection of photographs showcasing designers’ and brands’ clothing, accessories, and beauty products. It’s like the combination of a fashion product catalog and an e-magazine.
Moreover, it can promote the products, attract new customers, highlight creativity, and create new fashion product collections for e-commerce businesses. Lookbooks consist of images of models wearing fashion items to make them more realistic and provide a proper idea of size, color, and features.
Along with these, fashion lookbooks are in trend for social media influencers and celebrities because they can be used to give the audience different styling ideas and show them trendy outfits, accessories, and usage of beauty products. It can be a fantastic tool for digital marketing.
We know the fashion market is evolving with digital marketing on global platforms. Around 65% online buyers consider researching the products before purchasing. In that case, they rely on the fashion lookbooks.
But why should you shoot a lookbook professionally? Is it possible to do it yourself, or you must go for a professional photoshoot? You’ll get the answers in the next section.
Why Shoot a Lookbook?
Lookbook is essential for ecommerce brands because it’s one of the best ways to engage customers. Even if you’re a beginner online entrepreneur, you should shoot a lookbook to display your creations. Here are the reasons you must consider a professional lookbook shoot.
- A lookbook can be a powerful visual storytelling medium to show the product designs’ inspiration, mood, and gesture. To make it stronger, you should hire professional photographers to portray your innovative storytelling of products through their accurate photography techniques.
- Whether you’re a fashion designer or building a brand, investing in the proficient shoot of the models putting on the fashion items of your designs is always a win. Because it attracts the attention of all online shoppers.
- Besides the online presence, marketing, and promotion, these lookbooks are sometimes featured in high-ranking magazines and newspapers. A mastery photoshoot can make this practical and reach more consumers.
- Though it can be costly for new business owners, a polished shoot makes your business more professional and elegant to the customers. It also saves time and energy so that you can focus on product quality, new product launches, and promotions.
- Not only for the brands or designers, photographers often collaborate to create a strong portfolio for their business. So, these shoots are fruitful for photographers. They can promote your brand to their followers, which can create a powerful connection with potential customers.
Now you must be wondering: Is it necessary to use lookbook photography for e-commerce business? Right? We’ll discuss this below.
Why is Lookbook Photography Important for E-commerce Businesses?
If you want to build a global brand and reach most countries, it’s necessary to represent a well-organized story through product designs. The best method to display your catalogs is a lookbook.
When the models wear the products, styling guides are shown to the customers so they can decide whether it’s suitable for them. It can also demonstrate the versatility of the products.
With lookbook photography, you can create a cohesive brand image worldwide. Keeping a consistent presentation helps to improve the brand identity. Thus, it has a significant role in establishing reliability and making customers remember your brand.
Lookbooks are essential for diverse marketing and promotional channels like social media, YouTube, and email campaigns. It doubles your presence on the digital landscape. The aesthetics of efficient lookbook photography boosts interest and gathers high traffic on e-commerce websites.
In addition, lookbooks are not only for displaying your products; they develop an emotional connection with the customers. Collaborating with a professional lookbook or e-commerce photographer can enhance your brand quality. Now, you’ll learn about the advantages of using high-quality lookbook photography.
What are The Benefits of Using High-quality Lookbook Photography?
Regarding digital promotions and marketing, photography is the ultimate way to portray a realistic presentation with a creative touch. Not only the climbs, there are more benefits to using a lookbook in e-commerce businesses.
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Creating a Professional Brand Image and Aesthetic Appeal
When you want to make a professional brand image on the digital landscape, lookbooks can help you because they show the professionalism and effort you’re dedicating to your business. Capturing a product photo in your messy room is the easiest thing for the company, but shooting a product catalog needs immense passion and love for your customers. It helps to create an aesthetic appeal to your products.
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Showcasing the Products
Whether for marketing or launching new products, lookbook photography can do its best to display the products in the most attractive way. It captures the subtle details of the products, and customers get a glimpse with a click. This can save them time, and they find it effective for online purchases. Also, it helps to compare the products.
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Increasing Social Engagement
Social media engagement is essential for online businesses to gather maximum customers or create public brand value. Nowadays, people are more interested in purchasing from Facebook, Instagram, and e-commerce websites than stores.
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Competitive Advantage
Not all online brands are familiar with this marketing tool; when you use it, that sets you apart from the rest. So, it helps the customers to compare your brand with the competitors. It’s one of the significant reasons you should incorporate lookbook photography into your online shop.
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Building Customer Trust
The effective way to achieve the desired success for an e-commerce business is to gain the customer’s trust. Lookbook photography can make this more accessible because it captures the details and mood of your products to build an emotional bond with potential customers.
Planning Your Lookbook
Preparing for a successful lookbook is compulsory because it reflects the dedication and effort to present your brand image to the community. Here are 4 simple tips you should remember while planning your lookbook.
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Define Your Target Audience and Brand Aesthetic
To convey a meaningful product promotion to the consumers, you need to specify the target audience and find the brand aesthetics. This will help you understand what mood boards or storytelling are used to attract potential customers.
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Choose a Concept and Theme for Your Lookbook
After finding the brand aesthetics, you must consider a concept and theme. Suppose you’re working on the designs for the fall lookbook. You can use the yellow and orange blended background theme with bohemian styling.
The urban jungle theme can be the ultimate choice if you want to portray natural beauty. In that case, you can use a green color palette with a dark academic jungle outlook using lanterns, books, and candles.
Apart from the theme, you can utilize different shapes and patterns like square, triangle, or round. Another important thing is matching the mode and vibe with the texture of the background.
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Select the Products You Want to Showcase
While picking the products for the lookbook, you should highlight the new launch, seasonal collections, and best-seller items. Including a diverse range of products can show the versatility of your brand to the consumers.
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Create a Shot List and Storyboard
Now that you have chosen the products to showcase, you need to make a list of shots and storyboards before starting the photoshoot. Begin with the opening shot with a neutral background, then go with the full-length photo capturing the product shape.
After that, take a close shot to get the nearest glimpse of the product. For example, your products have stone or embroidery work. You have to focus on the detailing part with this shot.
Moreover, it’s the time to take back view and action shots. Add a portrait or headshot to focus on the styling ideas. At last, close with the dramatic backdrop and showstopper pose. Make a storyboard to coordinate the photoshoot better and connect with the customers.
Now, it’s time to shoot the lookbook and implement the planning. We’ve shared some easy techniques to shoot a perfect lookbook for your business.
Shooting Your Lookbook
The next step for your lookbook is starting a photoshoot. You need to consider some essential things before shooting the lookbook for ecommerce businesses. These will be helpful for business owners and photographers as well.
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Choose the Right Photography Equipment
First, select a digital or DSLR camera for the lookbook photographs. Avoid using a mobile camera because it won’t get you the outcome. To get the headshots, you can use the 50mm that captures the focal length or 85mm for the prime lenses.
You can use 24mm or 35mm lenses to achieve the wide angle. Beyond this, you’ll need a tripod with a 360º rise and a flexible handle. Make a solid backdrop for all types of lookbooks.
You can use remote shutter release to prevent hand shaking while clicking the images. Additionally, using a reflector or diffuser is recommended to balance the color, brightness, and direction and reduce shadows.
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Set up Your Lighting
Lighting is the most essential tool to compose high-quality images. Before preparing the lights for photography, you must understand the concepts first. Then, find the right location where you can get better lighting.
Experts suggest using daytime and natural light to capture realistic beauty. If it’s impossible, you can go with artificial lights like a backlight, fill light, or key light. Using softboxes, external lighting flashes or strobes, diffusers, and white balance lights can be good options for consistent lighting.
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Style Your Products
At this point, you have to take the products and brainstorm for the styling of your products. Selecting a mood board and target audience is the first step to thinking about the perfect styling method.
Later, prepare an appealing background focus. More than just photography techniques are required; you need to focus on the appearance of the models as well. Also, try to experiment with different fashion photography poses.
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Work with Models
A successful photo shoot depends on the expertise of the models. So, you should cast the models according to your products and social trends to boost the promotions. Collaborate with renowned faces and prepare a comfortable environment for them. Also, let them check the wardrobe fitting before the shoot to ensure the size.
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Capture Different Types of Shots
As we’ve mentioned earlier, plan for the different shot types. Now, it’s time to implement them into your photography. You can blend them or take new shots like overhead, motion, and silhouette shots to make the photoshoot impressive.
To shoot a compelling lookbook, you’ll need an expert photographer who can capture your thoughts and emotions in the pictures. We’re here to help with the guide to get the best photographer.
How to Find the Best Photographer
You should find the best fashion lookbook e-commerce photographer for promising lookbook photography because they can create an outstanding product catalog for the business. While looking for an expert lookbook photographer, you must define your needs first.
Moreover, search for local photographers and read the reviews carefully. Then, evaluate the qualifications and experience. Visit the photography studio if possible before booking their services.
After evaluating some photographers online, you should choose the one who specializes in lookbooks and headshots. Thus, considering their expertise in different photography techniques and services in lookbook and headshot photography, they can provide you with a versatile catalog for showcasing your products on the models.
Now that you’re done finding photographers, you need to edit the pictures to make them more appealing and realistic. Keep reading to get a complete idea of the editing and post-processing steps of the lookbooks.
Editing and Post-Processing
Raw photographs can be high-quality ones. However, editing the images is essential to give them a professional touch. You must work on the color correction and balance the contrast.
Set the exposure with graduated filters and adjustment brushes. Next, apply the light retouching to remove the blemishes, highlight the details, and enhance the natural appearance and authentic lighting. Focus on the details like the model’s skin tone and the products’ colors while adjusting the color, contrast, and exposure.
To form the perfect photographs, you should create a consistent look and feel for all your photos. In that case, fine-tune the images with Adobe Photoshop. Apply the balanced editing presets or adjust manually to ensure the perfect tone, saturation, and contrast.
After processing the images, you should understand the best way to use your lookbook for your ecommerce business. Now, we’ll explain how to use it for marketing and promotions.
How to Use Your Lookbook?
In the era of digitalization, it’s necessary to understand where you can implement the lookbooks to get the highest attention. Start with sharing your lookbook on your website and social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Email campaigns are among the most professional ways to communicate with potential customers and resellers. You can attach the lookbook portfolio with warm text with the email to approach the customers.
You can also run promotional ads on digital platforms featuring the lookbook images. Set up your budget for promotions, bidding strategy, and target audience. After that, design the ads, launch them, and monitor them closely.
FAQ
What Should Be Included in a Fashion Lookbook?
A fashion lookbook should contain high-quality images, proper editing, varieties of shots, diverse outfits, brand identity, innovative layouts, creative themes, model shots, product information, and contact details.
How to Make a Fashion Lookbook?
To make a fashion lookbook, you should define the concept and theme, plan the layout designs, pick the products, create mood boards, set up the photography studio, style the shoot, capture the images, edit or retouch, implement the layouts, print or publish online.
What are the Different Types of Lookbooks?
The most common lookbooks are seasonal, capsule collection, trendy, editorial, collaboration, product photography, fashion, portrait, lifestyle, landscape, social media, and personal branding.
Conclusion
Investing in fashion lookbook photography for your e-commerce can be profitable if you can utilize it ideally. This guide will help you generate a prominent lookbook for your business that can boost your online brand presence and gain your customers’ loyalty.
Hiring an expert photographer for the shoot will help you to get the perfect result. Also, book a professional image editing service if you aren’t familiar with Photoshop tools. We hope creating a lookbook according to our guide will enhance your brand identity and online visibility.
Author’s Bio: Based in New York City, David Genik is the premier headshot photographer in the area. He specializes in portraits for actors, fashion industry clients, LinkedIn profiles, corporations, executives, and other professionals. David’s photography style is heavily influenced by fashion-based editorials with dramatic lighting choices mixed with classic design. With over 15 years of experience photographing diverse subjects, David is highly skilled at connecting with his clients and understanding their needs for the perfect headshot. Whether his clients are looking for traditional corporate shots or edgy, artistic portraits, David works closely with them to understand their vision and goals. The final images showcase both his technical expertise and creative artistry.
