20 Sep 2023

You may be an experienced professional from the world of product photography or just starting out working for an e-commerce photography studio. Either way, the challenge faced when struggling for ideas is a difficult one. For many of us, we can lack the awareness and tools to overcome such a challenge and that causes us to fall of out love for our hobby, professional careers and work we are so deeply involved in.

The aim of today is to explore some of the best ways a packshot photographer or anyone else working in e-commerce photography can overcome a lack of ideas.

Whilst some of these suggestions may sound obvious to many, we start off with a simple, yet effective action. Stepping away from the process means taking a break from that thing which is causing you to feel angry, frustrated and lost.

This can be as little as going for a walk to clear your head, engaging with a hobby to switch your focus or socialising with others. By breaking that chain of negative thinking, we can often reflect more clearly on a situation and find potential solutions. Product photography requires us to be creative; when that creativity struggles, the results we deliver will do so too.

If we flip around the question from a lack of ideas to far too many we get the same problem. We start to feel overwhelmed by an inability to make a decision or understand the path we must follow when working on an e-commerce photography project.

A great way to move from being overwhelmed to a more positive space is to limit the options available to you when there are too many. Equally, creating a plan of possible options also acts as a good tool for dealing with a lack of ideas because you can plan out the impact of each choice.

We live in a connected, digital age that offers both positive and negative experiences for us as people and as packshot photographers. Embracing the idea of collaborating with others working in product photography, or joining support networks for those in a similar situation can really transform our state of mind.

Where this really comes into its own is by providing you with inspiration. By talking to others, seeing their ideas, and sharing experiences you may well discover new directions to go in as an e-commerce photography studio or styles to try out as an independent packshot photographer.

A fantastic way to deal with a lack of ideas is by adding some structure to your professional life. If we focus on our goals in product photography and on individual projects, we can then start to identify problems and how to solve them.

If we understand where we are trying to go and what we are trying to achieve, we can then narrow down our focus. This makes the job of overcoming challenges around creativity more specific and by extension, possible solutions become easier to find.