Photography Consumer Insights

Trend - AI companies are creating photography-mimicking tools that generate professional product photos for eCommerce and marketing materials. These photos are positioned as more affordable options to professional photography, without compromising on quality or quantity.

Insight - Newer startups, particularly those with minimal funding, often search for ways to cut operation costs wherever possible. One area that is particularly expensive for most startups is advertising, with everything from strategizing to reachouts to generating marketing materials costing a large sum. In order to cut-down on some of these costs, startups are seeking AI-powered tools that automate and streamline these processes. AI companies are responding with marketing photo generating tools.

Trend - Tech brands are developing head-mounted wearables with built-in high-definition screens. These devices do not have onboard processors for VR, and serve primarily as large, private, simulated screens. This enables brands to reduce prices and appeal to consumers who require on-the-go displays.

Insight - Many remote workers choose to work in environments different from their home desks, such as coffee shops, for a change of environment and mindset. These workers prioritize remote productivity solutions to optimize workflow on the go, and are drawn to low-cost solutions to these desires. Tech brands are recognizing the need for remote productivity solutions and are creating lower-cost wearables with privacy features to address these consumers.

Trend - Independent developers are using shared protocols to create decentralized content aggregator platforms. Companies do not own or moderate these platforms, which offers better privacy than large alternatives. Many of these platforms communicate with one another to form the 'Fediverse.'

Insight - Social media users are becoming increasingly dissuaded from the popular websites due to changes in moderation. Undesirable policy changes such as restrictive guidelines, feature monetization, and centralized control have led to users gravitating towards alternatives created by independent developers. Users prioritize privacy, personalization, and freedom on social media platforms, leading to several decentralized platforms that form the federalized metaverse, or the Fediverse.

Implications - As consumer-generated content continues to reign supreme, a need to refine and personalize content is on the rise. As a result, consumers are turning to platforms and apps that help bring their photos to life. Using features like holographic apps and custom lenses to add dimension and texture to a photo, these added features not only offer customization, but they adhere to the standard of modern, multimedia forms of entertainment.

Implications - Challenging the proliferation of smartphone photography, the camera industry is seeing an overhaul in specialized capabilities that put more power into the hands of the photographer than ever before. Leveraging emerging innovations in popular technology, including VR, auto-following and heat-mapping, the latest cameras offer consumers and professional photographers alike a multitude of futuristic features to experiment with.

Implications - With the increase of video bloggers and social media influencers turning their visual platforms into full-time careers, there is an increasing demand for accessible high tech camera equipment that can be taken on the go. Professional quality lenses, stabilizers and mounts are being reformatted as portable phone and camera attachments that can be easily carried around, ready to be whipped out at a moment’s notice. This shift towards minimized equipment denotes a desire for more niche products that perform specialized tasks rather than heavy duty do-it-all machinery.

Implications - With a plethora of photo editing apps at their fingertips, everyday consumers are able to teach themselves advanced image enhancing techniques previously reserved for licensed photographers. Quickly mastering the use of picture editing features and customizable alterations, often using multiple apps to perfect a single image, today’s amateur photographers are producing professional quality portfolios that suit their personal aesthetic preferences.

Implications - As content creation becomes commonplace, consumers search for professional cameras that are not only user-friendly, but come with Wi-Fi and photo-sharing capabilities. Social platforms such as Instagram have made photography easier than ever, but they've also cultivated a more serious hobbyist photographer, making the DSLR market ripe with potential. This progression indicates the rise of the "professional" social sharer.

Implications - Consumers are searching for devices that are able to capture high-quality action photos without necessarily splurging on a full-fleged DSLR camera. Whether it's an enhanced smartphone or specially engineered wearables, these products cater to a desire to create quality content at a rapid rate. In today's social media climate, user-generated content is not only a form of personal branding; it's also a commodity.

Implications - Taking into account the growing desire for collaboration, photo services and apps are turning to customized tools that allow for more communal engagement. Redefining how users edit, upload and share images, these services allow for a real-time interaction by offering platforms that allow multiple users to access, create and alter content as they see fit. Such interactive platforms suggest an increasing desire for peer-to-peer engagement, especially when it comes to content creation.