What Is Industrial Photography? A Short Introduction
When it comes to types and styles of photography, there’s lots of different niches, and lots of jargon to get your head around. With each type of photography having distinctive visual styles, it can be difficult to describe exactly what it is that you want your photos to look like without understanding some of these technical terms.
So, to help you, here’s our short introduction to industrial photography, as well as a few other styles and subgenres of the form that you might come across.
What is industrial photography?
Industrial photography is a niche of commercial photography that focuses on working with businesses in the industrial sector – this means engineering, manufacturing, aviation, factories and can even include police and firefighters.
Of course, within this niche there’s still a huge amount of variation. The types of images you might take for aviation are totally different to what a factory would need, for example. But the general focus is on showing things being made, or the factories or engineering that goes into making them – rather than taking photos of the products themselves.
Industrial or corporate portraits
One subtype of industrial photography is known as industrial or corporate portraiture. This is taking photographic portraits of people at work, whether this be police officers, factory workers, tradespeople or any other kind of industrial work. Often, this type of portrait photography is designed to make people look realistic when carrying out their jobs, rather than focusing on the aesthetics of the image or subject.
This means that props need to look authentic, the lighting needs to look natural, and your scene should look like a realistic work environment. While many people will find it difficult to pose naturally for a portrait once the camera is around, our job as photographers is to ensure that your business receives natural, authentic marketing images that show your people looking their very best.
Architecture or industrial landscape shots
Another common subtype of industrial photography is known as architecture shots or industrial landscapes. This type of photography is all about getting the scale of the industrial work, creating large, wide images of factory floors or lorry parks. This may use fisheye or wide angle lenses or even drone shots to create images that capture the size of the manufacturing effort being undertaken.
Action shots
Action shots are an extremely popular type of industrial photography. This refers to photos of people working framed in exciting ways. Think sparks flying, chainsaws whirring, or machinery moving. These photos can be a real challenge to capture as the lighting and motion is often difficult.
High quality, well-taken action shots can really lift an industrial website or marketing campaign. They give people a real sense of what it is that you do, and what you can offer them. From tree surgery to welding to vehicle manufacture, they highlight the very important engineering and manufacturing work that goes on.
Alex Bailey is a specialist in industrial photography – I’ve worked across a huge range of industries and sectors, capturing action shots, portraits or landscape shots on a number of different industrial environments. Get in touch with me to discuss your industrial photography needs.