The Subject:
Why Versed skincare as creative brief
I chose Versed as a creative subject because most clean beauty brands talk transparency but their visuals tell a different story. Premium-priced opacity wrapped in marble and florals. Versed solved that gap by building a line around proven ingredients and accessible pricing, then leaning into their formula-first investment model with simple PCR packaging and community co-creation. Working from Vancouver as a skincare product photographer, that tension between clinical efficacy and everyday accessibility felt like the right brief to work through visually.
The Challenge:
Hydration without luxury aesthetics
The challenge I set for myself was straightforward. Take a gel-cream moisturizer positioned for mass retail and online marketplaces, and communicate hydration in a way that feels premium without drifting into luxury aesthetics that fight affordability. Most skincare photography leans on spa tropes or over-retouched before-and-after storytelling. Both paths felt wrong for a brand that relies on science-backed performance and transparency around ingredient provenance.
The opportunity was to build a visual system that makes hydration instantly legible, keeps packaging readable across different formats, and scales cleanly from product detail pages to paid social without losing the core benefit story.
The Execution:
Water and bubbles as functional metaphor
If a brand like this needed product imagery that works across direct-to-consumer sites, online marketplaces, and retail shelf resets, here is how I would approach it. Water and bubbles became the functional metaphor for hydration. Not gratuitous pour shots, but controlled motion that reads as fresh and buoyant without feeling overly produced. I built the lighting around bright, high-key setups that sculpt translucent materials into crisp highlights while managing glare on both the water and the product surface.
Glass refraction was the technical hurdle. I needed formula and branding tack-sharp while the surrounding water stayed clear and dimensional, so I positioned the light carefully and maintained a stable perspective that would hold up across multiple crops.
Composition for flexible formats
The composition stayed central and close. Product anchored as the focal plane with purposeful negative space around it. That structure lets the image breathe on a product page, crop cleanly for vertical social formats, or stack into content modules without sacrificing label legibility. Bubbles added micro-texture and depth to prevent flatness, but I kept them controlled so they supported the hydration story instead of competing with the packaging.
The tone stayed playful and everyday. No marble, no florals, no luxury sheen that might undermine the brand's accessible positioning or their community-first ethos.
The Deliverables:
Launch-ready photo collection
These images work well as a launch-ready photo collection. The set includes main campaign visuals where water motion communicates benefit instantly, e-commerce-ready product photos with compliant label readability and accurate color, and hydration-driven social images designed for flexible formats and platform-specific crops.
This approach would serve brands navigating retail compliance friction, lean in-house teams tired of revision cycles, and the pressure to compete visually with clean-beauty leaders while staying under mass-market budgets. Each frame has a defined job, from marketplace compliance photos to attention-grabbing, playful benefit storytelling.
The Approach:
Product photography as conversion tool
This project demonstrates how I think about product photography as a conversion tool, not decoration. Building systems that balance scientific clarity with inviting freshness, maintaining consistency across multiple products, and delivering images that reduce friction instead of creating it.
As a Vancouver product photographer specializing in beauty work that scales across different channels without losing brand integrity, I am always looking to explore new creative briefs. If you are a skincare brand with a similar challenge, let's talk about your next shoot.
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- other recent projects
Byoma hydrating serum photography showing dropper mechanics and micro-bubble texture clarity
Rhode skincare photography highlighting texture and gloss with directional lighting
OUAI detox shampoo photography with water splash and product detail
Kibon Beauty sheet mask photography for e-commerce and social media campaigns
Everlucid serum photography using practical gradient lighting techniques
Dfinite foundation swatch photography comparing lighter and deeper shade formulas side by side
