📷 Body Shelf Photography 😮💨
The hottest way to photograph a product...
If you’ve subscribed to this newsletter… thank you for being early investors in the future of a global media empire. Let’s talk about the hottest way to market a product: body shelf product photography.
What is body shelf product photography? Its basically when you use a model’s body as the shelf for your product. Pretty simple. Let’s look at some top-tier examples and break down how to best leverage this art direction style.
Skincare
Body shelf photography is most often employed by skincare brands across soap, moisturizer and other products. This pairing makes sense as it depicts how the consumer will use the product and shows the great skin you’ll have after using the product. There isn’t a certain level of sensuality and openness in this style of photography. Great examples above from Salt + Stone, Orris, CDG, and Humanrace.
Framing
The contours of the human body present myriad possibilities to frame products in a provocative way, as we see in the above example from Marc Jacobs. But we can see how brining in two models can create even more unique compositions, such as the example from Health Ade Kombucha. These brands are exploring the use of the human body to showcase products outside of the skincare vertical.
Shoe
A tried and true trope is stacking your product atop a vertically oriented shoe, such as in the examples from Jacuemus or Houseplant. Doesn’t matter what the product is… just needs to be a top a shoe, and the model needs to be in upside down vampire mode.
Nyotaimori
Why does body shelf photography elicit such a provocative response? I would argue it has some roots in the Japanese tradition of Nyotaimori, aka eating sushi off of someone’s body. This practice began in the 1970s and became very popular during the economic rise of Japan.
While this practice is gauche and a bit degrading, I do think there is something from this practice that has carried culturally come over into the modern practice of body shelf photography.
The human anatomy elicits a certain psychological response, drawing in consumers, and offers unique ways to frame your product, whether you’re in a skincare vertical or not.
About Jake
Jake Bell is a content marketing strategist based in NYC. He specializes in branding, art direction, creative strategy, content creation, and making things cool.
To get in touch visit www.jb.studio
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