The new creative product photography playbook
Creativity is needed more than ever. Your eCom, social, CRM, and website all rely on creative quality for performance. TikTok has blown up, and there's more visual communication than ever.
Despite this, the way brands produce their visuals is stuck in the old days. Photo studios' 4-6 week timelines and $100 per shot doesn't give modern brands the freedom they need.
Business-as-usual prevails, creativity suffers, and performance optimizations never see daylight.
Digital Twins (photorealistic 3D models) flip this idea. Brands can create unlimited creative shots from one single model. This means testing trends, pivoting campaigns, and updating product labels in minutes, straight from the browser.
Creative product photography examples & inspiration
Let's see some creative product photography examples and inspiration, all made with Digital Twins.
Floating objects
Floating photography creates premium perception and viral potential. Perfect for beauty serums suspended with ingredient bubbles or tech accessories defying gravity. TikTok and Instagram reward this visual drama with higher engagement.
Digital Twins make floating shots trivial. No wires, no complex rigging. Position products at any angle, add motion for Reels, export vertical for Stories. What takes a full studio day happens in minutes.
Flat lay photography
Flat lays drive social commerce and editorial content. Fashion brands showcase complete outfits. Beauty brands create routine stories. CPG brands build gift guides. Each arrangement traditionally requires meticulous physical styling.
Virtual flat lays let you drag, drop, and perfect instantly. Test product combinations for different audiences. Swap seasonal props without disturbing layouts. Scale from 5 products to 50 without exponential complexity.
Endro Cosmétiques uses flat lay photography to add style and character to its seasonal product offerings. Made with Omi.
Pattern shots
Repeating patterns create distinctive brand moments. Lipsticks in color gradients. Supplements in geometric arrangements. Beverages in rainbow sequences. These shots require precise spacing and consistent lighting across dozens of products.
Digital Twins enable total precision. Clone products. Adjust spacing down to the last pixel. Create patterns impossible (or very expensive) with physical constraints. Perfect for hero banners and social campaigns that need immediate recognition.
Creative lighting
Lighting sells luxury. Dramatic shadows for perfume. Soft naturals for wellness. Clinical brightness for skincare. Each mood traditionally requires different studio setups and expertise.
Virtual lighting offers simple light adjustments that would take hours to set up in a studio. Create moody editorial shots for Instagram. Switch to bright, even lighting (or transparent background) for Amazon listings. Generate both from the same model and the same scene without rebooking studios or doing any post-production.
Product video
Video drives conversions but remains the most expensive format to produce (if it hadn't been, you'd see it everywhere all the time). Simple rotations, texture reveals, and usage demonstrations each require separate motion setups.
Digital Twins make video accessible at a moment's notice. Animate 360 spins instantly. Create smooth camera movements. Export aspect ratios for every platform. The same model that powers stills now generates motion content at scale. Omi's lets you turn your still scenes into dynamic product videos in just a few clicks.
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.
Surreal settings
Surreal environments differentiate brands and capture attention. Skincare floating in clouds. Beverages in abstract color worlds. Physics-defying feats. These concepts traditionally require expensive CGI or impossible practical effects.
Virtual environments remove all constraints. Place products in any imaginable setting. Test wild concepts without commitment. Create signature visual styles that competitors can't easily replicate.
Get creative with Digital Twins
Creative use of props
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.
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.
Minimalist photography
Minimalism appears simple but demands careful craft. Every shadow must be intentional. Every reflection calculated. One misplaced element ruins the shot. But do it right, and it works as well as any creative approach.
Minimalism in virtual photography provides total control. Perfect symmetry. Precise negative space. Consistent shadow softness across your entire catalog. Essential for global luxury brands.
Seasonal campaigns
Seasonal photography traditionally happens off-season. Christmas in July. Spring in October. This requires storing samples, predicting trends, meticulous planning, and hoping nothing changes.
Virtual seasonal production happens on demand. Add holiday props when needed. Update backgrounds for any season. Transform your normal catalog for Black Friday without months of planning. React to trending seasonal aesthetics (and TikTok trends) immediately.
Digital Twins offer an operational advantage in creativity
Beyond offering amazing creativity, virtual production gives marketing teams new life.
Speed that matches modern marketing
Traditional photography: 4-6 week timelines. Digital Twins: iterations in minutes. When TikTok trends last days not months, production speed determines who capitalizes.
Brands using virtual production launch campaigns orders of magnitude faster. They test 10x more variations. They update creative based on real-time performance data. Speed becomes competitive advantage.
Omi's easy-to-use Virtual Photo studio for unlimited creative product photography.
Budgets that scale with ambition
Physical shoots scale costs linearly; more shots, more budget. Digital Twins invert this.
One upfront investment and straightforward subscription pricing enables unlimited variations. The per-image cost drops dramatically the more you create.
ROI compounds over time. Holiday variants. Regional adaptations. Channel-specific versions. A/B test variations. All from the same 3D model investment. Brands typically report 60-90% cost reduction versus traditional photography while producing 5x more content.
Want to learn more about Digital Twins? Request a demo with Omi today.
Elevate your product photography with Omi
About the author
Emma Head
-
Technical Writer, Product Imagery
Emma Head researches and writes about product photography, covering its role in eCommerce, social media, and digital advertising. She focuses on making complex topics accessible, helping brands and creators improve their visual content. In addition to this, she contributes to Omi's marketing, UX, and branding.
