In-use photography is cheap to commission and easy to get subtly wrong, because the failures are technical and only appear at the point of use: too small once cropped, wrong ratio, a brand visible in the background, a face with no release.
What to put in the public brief
- The setting you need, described generally
- How many final images
- Whether people may appear, and whether a release is required
- The licence you are buying
- Whether they supply the product or you ship it
Keep the brand and product identity private if pre-launch.
What to put in the private instructions
Describe the setting, not the styling
"A kitchen counter in daylight, ordinary and lived-in" gets something usable. A styled description gets a bad imitation of a stock photo.
Ask for space around the subject
So one shot crops to square, portrait and wide. State the ratios you will need, because they cannot be added later.
Say what must not be in frame
Other brands, labels, screens showing content, and anything that dates the image. Also faces, unless you have handled the release.
Ask for one wide and one close of the same set-up
Two useful images from one arrangement is the cheapest thing in this brief.
Proof worth requiring
Ask for
Original files at full resolution, unedited, transferred without messaging-app compression, plus a signed release for any recognisable person.
Do not ask for
Filters, presets or retouching. You can always process a clean original; you cannot remove a preset that has been baked in.
When this task type is the wrong tool
If you need consistency across a large catalogue, a studio does that better and cheaper at volume. This is for range and realism, not uniformity.
If motion matters — showing how something works rather than where it lives — a product demo is the right brief and stills will frustrate you.