How Fitness Brand Product Photography Can Be Your Success

By Aamina Suleman , Aug 5 2021
fitness brand

Featured Image: iStock/vectornation

Despite the looming pandemic, or perhaps because of it, people have become keener towards their overall well-being and physical health. Globally, people are increasingly trying out new workout plans, wearable technology, online fitness programs, workout apps, wellness coaching, personal and group training. Thus, brands are spending on novel and creative ideas for fitness brand product photography to attract such niche markets.

Let’s keep a few product photography ideas and tips clicking fitness brands these days in the digital world.

Induce Emotional Appeal In Marketing Photos

The ‘Just Do It’ slogan of Nike has become an increasingly inclusive fashion brand over the years. They’ve marketed their campaigns at the differently-abled people; at people belonging to different religions who follow a fixed apparel code like Hijab; and at people with skin colors other than white. Hence, they’ve widened their audience, however, maintained the fact that their products are for fitness and sports lovers. And this feature of their brand marketing has garnered fruitful attention.

Nike’s digital marketing strategy actively induces emotional branding in its brilliant advertising. The unique selling proposition here is they’re selling products wrapped in emotional and inspirational stories. And to successfully translate this appeal and market diversity, they effectively use photography in a way that evokes an emotional response.

Fun Fitness Fact: The first commercial gym is typically credited to French gymnast and strongman, Hippolyte Triat.
Source: clubready.club

Photography Trick: Humanize your brand product by connecting emotions to your fitness fashion photos. The best way to do this is to let your photos tell a story of inspiration, motivation, and/or struggle.

Here are tips to humanize fitness product photos.

Use people

  • Have people grab products like duffle bags, hats, backpacks, and water bottles.
  • Photograph celebrities and influencers. Also, run campaigns to invite customers to share their photos in your fitness gear.
  • Think about diversity. Make sure your models are of different age groups, skin colors, body types.

Use Advertising Appeals

  • Make sure you add photos that inspire people to succeed.
  • Pick an emotion like happiness and show it with tears of joy or a laugh.
  • Use visual cues to represent feelings. For example, sweat signifies hard work.

Focus On Brand’s Vigor in Fitness Photos

Gymshark is a gym clothing and accessories brand targeted at men and women. They focus on comfort, durability, and strength. They promote fitness apparel including t-shirts, hoodies, leggings, workout bags.

They’ve been investing extensively in influencer marketing by collaborating with social media influencers. Up until 2020, the company was working with over 120 influencers to promote the fitness brand on social networking channels.

But that’s not all, the brand partnered with photographer Kris Askey for a product photoshoot that signified and emphasized the brand name/logo in action. Notice how the brand, GymShark stands out in these photos. See the brand’s name, the shark icon, and the illustration.

Fun Fitness Fact: After the Greco-Roman Empires fall and prior to the 1800s, the pursuit for a sculpted and healthy body was frowned upon.
Source: clubready.club

Photography Trick: When you want to focus on the brand name, the rest of the things in the photo need to have minimal aesthetics. Keep the background a plain neutral color, don’t add too much focus on the model’s face, and show the product and the brand name more.

Here are a few brand photography tips.

Show-off Brand Logo

  • Make sure to show brand name and fitness logo in a variety of ways like a brand mark, wordmark, combination mark, or letter mark.
  • Show brand logo as a backdrop for the image. The logo can be on the wall as a poster, painting, or engraving, or it can be a sculpture.
  • Add the logo to each image as a watermark if the models are not posing in ways that highlight the logo on the product.

Be Super Creative

  • Think out-of-the-box. If so, serve your fitness brand shoe on a platter.
  • Use graphic design elements like typography with photographs to create fun images for online marketing.
  • Create a cinematic effect with filters, photoshopping, and blend modes.

Focus On Your Fitness Logo

  • Make a fitness logo design that is full of energy
  • Customize your fitness brand logo so it is unique
  • Use fitness symbols to represent your professional logo design

Flaunt Yoga Postures In Fitness Brand Photography

Alo Yoga is a niche fitness brand that focuses on producing accessories and apparel for yoga practitioners (teachers, students, and fans). They claim each new piece of yoga fashion is tested by yogis to ensure the flexibility, design, and quality is on-point.

Alo Yoga uses photography to market its brand products and adds its yoga logo in images for brand awareness. In the photos, you will see how they have shown women in unique yoga postures/positions wearing their brand outfits. They have actively promoted on Twitter and Instagram, using photographs that convey their brand vision.

Fun Fitness Fact: Yoga became an exercise program that conformed to certain religious beliefs and promoted fitness through the union of body, mind, and spirit.
Source: unm.edu

Photography Trick: For yoga photography, focus on the action. Don’t have the models maintain a standing pose like any other fashion brand. Have women and men pose yoga positions to show how the products work in harmony with the body.

Here are a few yoga photography tips.

Pick A Good Location

  • Pick locations that radiate feelings you want viewers to experience.
  • Decide whether to photograph indoors or outdoors, and make sure they are aesthetically sound.
  • Think about day-time photography and night-time photos. Equip yourself with the right camera and lights for each.

Wait For Light

  • For a body silhouette, wait for the sunset to reveal the beauty of asana postures.
  • Know where to use highlights and shadows on the models in photos.
  • For indoor photography, even with the light from the sun, add more shine and brightness using lighting equipment.

Make Brand Clothes Matter

  • For each posture, figure out the apparel that will look best in that position.
  • For each location, decide the kind of material or color that’ll best do justice with the photo.
  • For each model, pick the size and style that best defines their body in action.

Are you using any of these photography tips to up the game of your fitness brand? The best trick among all these, which I haven’t mentioned, is to avoid stock photography. The success factors of your fitness brand photography depends on its originality and creativity.

Let me know in the comments below which photography trick works for your fitness products.

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A marketing design enthusiast, super passionate about the evolving scope of visual communication. With 3+ years of experience in content marketing, Aamina is driven by insights, inspirations, trends and creativity. She loves to travel, eat khowsuey, sip coffee, and watch mysteries.