Indian Terrain — Product Photography Guide

Chapter 1

Rules & specification

Listing imagesSix per product

ModelSame model across a SKU

LightOne direction per SKU

Delivered asCut-out + full frame

Applies to every listing image

Light

Consistent across everything	The light does not change between images, between colourways, or between products in a category. Two images of the same garment must show the same colour and the same depth of shadow.
One direction per SKU	In all six images of a SKU, the light falls from the same side — and every colourway of that SKU matches it.
Between SKUs it may change	One product lit from the left and the next from the right is fine. Inside a single SKU it never varies.
The shaded side	Never solid black. The fabric stays readable on the dark side of the garment.

Applies to every listing image

Colour

Colour is the single largest driver of returns on a menswear catalogue. A customer who receives a garment that does not look like the photograph sends it back.

Matched to the physical garment	Every delivered image is colour-matched against the actual garment or its fabric swatch, not judged by eye on a screen. The swatch is held against a calibrated monitor and the image corrected until they agree.
A reference chart in the set	A ColorChecker chart is photographed under the same light as the garment, at the start of each setup and again whenever the light or the product changes. The chart frames are delivered with the set.
Consistent across a SKU	The same garment reads as the same colour in all six images. A colourway that shifts between the front and the full image will be rejected.
Colour profile	sRGB, embedded in every delivered file. Images without an embedded profile shift unpredictably between browsers.
Neutral surroundings	Nothing in frame that throws colour onto the garment — no coloured backdrop, no coloured bounce, no warm floor.

Applies to every listing image

Background and shadow

The tone	#eaeaea — a light neutral grey. Every listing image sits on this tone, the front safe shot included.
Neutral	No colour cast at all. A warm or blue tint in the background lands on the edges of the garment and shows the moment the image is cut out. Measure it rather than judging it by eye: the red, green and blue values should read the same.
A cove, with no horizon	The background curves up off the floor with no join and no corner, so there is no horizon line anywhere in the frame. Wall and floor read as one continuous surface behind and beneath the model. A visible line where the two meet will be rejected.
Even and plain	No pattern, no texture, no visible seam, no hot spot. A gentle fall in tone from behind the model down to the floor is fine. Blotchiness is not.
The same tone throughout	One background tone across all six images, the front safe shot included, and the same across every product in the category. Not lighter for pale garments and darker for dark ones.
A soft shadow on the ground	Where the garment or the model meets the ground. Soft-edged and contained beneath — not spreading across the floor, and not a hard dark pool.
Kept in the cut-out	The cut-out is delivered with that shadow still on it. Without it the garment floats on the page.
Nothing on the backdrop	No shadow on the wall behind the model. It runs into the outline and makes a clean cut-out impossible.

Applies to every listing image

Crop and framing

Tops — front, back, angled	The legs run out of the bottom of the frame. These three are about the top half; cutting through the thigh keeps the eye on the garment. The head stays in, with a little space above it.
Bottoms — front, back, angled	The hem and the break over the shoe stay inside the frame. On a bottom the hem is the product, and an image that cuts it off has lost the thing the customer came for. The crop at the top may fall anywhere above the waistband.
Full	The whole figure inside the frame, head to shoes, with clear space above and below. Nothing cut.
Detail — two versions	Every tight detail image is also delivered as a wider frame with clear space around the subject. The tight one can be cropped further later; a frame shot tight cannot be opened back out.
Clear of all four edges	In the wider detail frame, the subject touches none of the four edges.
Background in the wider detail frame	The space around the subject is the same #eaeaea cove, unbroken. No horizon line, no edge of the backdrop, no floor texture and no props creeping in. This frame exists to be cropped into later, so anything sitting in that space has to be removable without touching the garment.

Applies to every listing image

Fit, styling and accessories

How the garment sits

Not stretched	No horizontal pulling lines across the chest, the seat or the thigh. A garment under tension photographs a size smaller than it is and reads as a poor fit.
Hanging as made	The garment falls the way it would on a customer — not pinned tight to the body, not bunched at the waist or the hem.

Styling and accessories

Identical across a SKU	The other garment, the belt and the shoes are the same in all six images, and the same across every colourway of that SKU. When a customer clicks from one colour to the next, only the product changes.
Different between products	Two products next to each other on the category page should not be styled identically. Change the styling between products, never within one.
Belt and shoes agree	Leather tones match — brown belt with brown shoes, black with black. At thumbnail size a mismatch is the first thing that reads as careless.
Nothing competes	Buckles, watches, sunglasses and bags stay plain. If an accessory is the first thing the eye lands on, it is wrong. Nothing carries a visible logo.
Nothing covers the product	An accessory must not sit over the part of the garment the image exists to show — a bag across the chest in a shirt front, a hand or a watch over a pocket detail.
Shoes suit the garment	Something a customer would actually wear with it. On bottoms the shoe is in frame at the hem, so it is part of the picture whether or not it is the product.

The front safe shot

A front shot, styled up	The same garment on the same model as image 1, taken as a freer, more editorial frame — a looser pose, movement or layering allowed. It replaces the flatlay as the sixth image.
Product still leads	The styling sets the attitude, but the picture still has to sell the garment. Nothing covers or obscures the part of the product the customer is buying.
Same background	#eaeaea, the same as the other five images — the extra styling lives in the pose and the pieces, not the set.

What arrives

Dimensions

Listing images and lifestyle banners are different deliverables at different sizes. Nothing is shared between the two lists.

Listing images — one size, every image

Applies to	Ratio	Delivered at
All six listing images front · back · angled · detail · full · front safe shot	0.72 : 1 upright, nearest whole-number equivalent 5 : 7	2000 × 2783
The wider detail frame	0.72 : 1	2000 × 2783

One ratio, no exceptions	Every listing image is delivered at this ratio, the front safe shot included. One ratio across the set is what makes the product page and the category grid line up.
Shoot above it	Capture well above 2000 × 2783 so the file can be re-cropped without loss.

Lifestyle banners — desktop

Placement	Ratio	Delivered at
Homepage banner	2.4 : 1	2560 × 1067
Collection banner	3 : 1	2560 × 854
Square banner	1 : 1	1440 × 1440

Lifestyle banners — mobile

Placement	Ratio	Delivered at
Homepage banner	0.59 : 1 upright	750 × 1271
Square banner	1 : 1	750 × 750

Banners are never cut out	Every banner is delivered as a full frame. The cut-out requirement applies to listing images only.
Compose for the tightest crop	Where several ratios are cut from one photograph, everything essential has to survive the shallowest of them. The 3:1 collection banner is the one that breaks first — it keeps half the height of the frame.

What arrives

File formats

Colour profile	sRGB, embedded.
Bit depth	8-bit per channel on delivery.
Cut-out version	PNG-24 with transparency, so the garment sits on whatever colour the site uses.
Full-frame version	JPEG, quality 90 or higher, no visible compression on flat areas of background.
Layered original	A layered PSD or TIFF is retained for every image and supplied on request. Flattened files alone cannot be revised later.
No sharpening baked in	Deliver unsharpened. Sharpening is applied at the size the image is used, and cannot be undone once it is in the file.

What arrives

How big the garment sits in the frame

Six images that are each well composed can still look wrong side by side if the garment sits at a different size or height in each one. On a product page the images are viewed one after another in the same box, so any jump is obvious.

Every file the same size	All six images are delivered at the same pixel dimensions and the same ratio. No image is trimmed down to fit its subject.
The same amount of space around the garment	The gap between the garment and the edge of the frame is roughly the same in every image. On the full image, leave visible space above the head and below the shoes rather than running close to the edge.
The same size across a SKU	The garment fills the same amount of the frame in all six images, and in every colourway of that product. If it jumps in size when the customer clicks from navy to olive, the set looks unfinished.
Centred left to right	The garment sits on the middle line of the frame, unless the shot is deliberately angled.
Fill space by extending the background	Where an image needs more width or height to reach the delivered ratio, extend the background outwards rather than cropping into the garment. The extension has to match the original background exactly — no visible seam, no step in tone.

What arrives

Shadows in the cut-out

The ground shadow is what stops a cut-out floating on the page. It has to survive the background removal, and it has to be separable afterwards.

The shadow is kept	The cut-out is delivered with the ground shadow visible, on transparency. The background goes; the shadow does not.
On its own layer	In the layered file, the garment and the shadow sit on separate layers. The shadow must be removable without re-cutting the garment.
Real, not drawn	The shadow is the one from the shoot, extracted — not a drop shadow added in post. A synthetic shadow reads as flat and identical across the set.
Soft edges preserved	The shadow fades out. It must not be cut off with a hard line where the original background ended.
Nothing else survives	No floor texture, no backdrop seam, no shadow on the wall. The ground shadow only.

Before delivery

Retouching limits

Remove	Leave alone
Lint, dust, loose threads and stray hairs	The fit of the garment. Do not narrow a waist, slim a leg, or straighten a shoulder line. If the fit is wrong, the sample is wrong.
Handling creases and fold lines	Seams, stitching and hardware. Nothing moved, straightened or rebuilt.
Sensor dust and marks on the background	The model's skin tone. No lightening, no evening out, no change of any kind.
Temporary blemishes on skin	The model's body. No reshaping, no slimming, no lengthening.
Rigging, clips and pins used on set	Fabric texture. No smoothing, no noise reduction — texture is what the customer zooms in for.
	The natural fall of the fabric. A garment with no creases at all looks fake.

What arrives

Delivery

Two versions of every image	One cut-out with the background removed and the ground shadow kept. One full frame with the background and floor as shot. Both are needed — the site uses each in different places, and neither can be made from the other afterwards.
Six per product	Front, back, angled, detail, full and front safe shot. Every colourway of a product counts as a separate product and gets its own six.
Plus the wider detail frame	The looser version of the detail image is delivered alongside the tight one, not instead of it.
Resolution	Well above the largest size the image is used at on the site. There is no way to recover detail from a file delivered too small.
Naming	Every file follows the naming convention set out below.

What arrives

File naming and handover

Set by the development team. File names drive the order the images appear in on the product page, so a file named wrongly appears in the wrong place on the site.

The formula

Format	sku-NN-view.jpg For example: itmsh1234-blu-01-front.jpg
sku	Style code plus colour code, exactly as they appear in the catalogue. No size code.
NN	Two-digit shot number, starting at 01. This decides the order the images appear in on the product page.
view	The code for that shot, from the table below. Optional, and there for readability only.
Swatch	The fabric swatch is named without a shot number: itmsh1234-blu-swatch.jpg

Shot numbers — identical for every SKU

Number	Image	View code in the file name
01	Front	`front`
02	Back	`back`
03	Angled	`side`
04	Detail	`detail`
05	Full	`full`
06	Front Safe Shot	`styled`
07 onwards	Any additional styling images	`styling`

Rules

Lower case only	Hyphens only. No spaces, no underscores.
No special characters	None of `& # % ( ) , ' " /` and no accented characters. They break image URLs.
Nothing from the shoot	No dates, no photographer names, and nothing like `final`, `v2` or `copy`.
The extension says which version it is	.jpg for the full-frame version. .png for the cut-out. Both carry the same name otherwise, so the pair sits together: `itmsh1234-blu-01-front.jpg` — full frame `itmsh1234-blu-01-front.png` — cut-out Lower case. Not `.JPG`, not `.jpeg`, not `.PNG`.
The wider detail frame	Add `-wide` before the extension: `itmsh1234-blu-04-detail-wide.jpg`
Two digits, always	`-01-`, never `-1-`.

Right and wrong

Correct	Wrong
`itmsh1234-blu-01-front.jpg`	`DSC_0492.JPG`
`itmsh1234-blu-02-back.jpg`	`Blue Shirt Final_v2.jpg`
`itmsh1234-blu-01.jpg`	`itmsh1234-blu-1.jpg`

Folders

Structure	IndianTerrain_Shoot_2026-08 / 01_Shirts / itmsh1234-blu /
One folder per SKU-colour	Each colourway of a product gets its own folder.
Raw files separate	Raw and working files are kept outside the delivery folders.

Check before handover

Every SKU has an 01. A missing 01 leaves the product page with no lead image.

No duplicate numbers within a SKU-colour.

The file count matches the docket.

The SKU spelling matches the catalogue exactly.

Before delivery

An image is rejected if

The cut-out has no shadow under it. The garment floats on the page.

There is a shadow on the backdrop behind the model, rather than only on the ground.

The light falls from a different side than the other images of the same SKU.

The background carries a colour cast, is not #eaeaea, or changes tone between images in the set.

There is a visible horizon line where the backdrop meets the floor.

The shaded side of the garment has gone solid black and the fabric can no longer be read.

A bottom is cut off at the hem, or a top does not run out of the bottom of the frame.

The detail image fills the frame edge to edge and no wider version was delivered with it.

The garment is pulled tight and shows horizontal stress lines.

The styling changes between two images of the same product, or between two colourways of it.

An accessory carries a logo, competes with the product, or covers the part of the garment the image exists to show.

The fabric texture has been smoothed or noise-reduced away, or the model's body has been reshaped.

The colour does not match the physical garment, or no ColorChecker frame was delivered with the set.

The file has no embedded sRGB profile, or is not the specified size and ratio.

The cut-out shadow is a drop shadow added in post rather than the real one from the shoot.

The garment sits at a different size or height in frame than the other images of the same SKU.

The file name does not follow the naming formula, or uses spaces, capitals, underscores or special characters.

A SKU has no image numbered 01, or has two files with the same number.

Chapter 2

T-shirts & Polos

Listing imagesSix per product

Shot onA model

ReferencesApproved

Image 1

Front

1

2

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5

Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Image 4

Detail

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Image 5

Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 3

Shirts

Listing imagesSix per product

Shot onA model

ReferencesApproved

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Detail

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Image 5

Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 4

Shorts

Listing imagesSix per product

Shot onA model

ReferencesApproved

Image 1

Front

1

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Image 5

Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 5

Jeans

Listing imagesSix per product

Shot onA model

ReferencesApproved

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Detail

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Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 6

Trousers

Listing imagesSix per product

Shot onA model

ReferencesApproved

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Detail

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Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 7

Jackets

Listing imagesSix per product

ModelSame model across a SKU

LightOne direction per SKU

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Detail

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Image 5

Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 8

Joggers

Listing imagesSix per product

ModelSame model across a SKU

LightOne direction per SKU

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Detail

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Image 5

Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 9

Sweaters

Listing imagesSix per product

ModelSame model across a SKU

LightOne direction per SKU

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Angled

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Detail

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Full

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Image 6

Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 10

Sweatshirts

Listing imagesSix per product

ModelSame model across a SKU

LightOne direction per SKU

Image 1

Front

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Image 2

Back

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Image 3

Angled

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Detail

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Front Safe Shot

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Chapter 7

Lifestyle & Banners

CategoriesFive, same as above

CapturedEvery scene shot twice

DeliveredFull-frame, not cut out

VideoOut of scope

Start here

What banner images are for

The listing images answer what is this garment. Banners answer what is this brand for. They run at the top of the homepage, across collection pages, in email and on social — the places where somebody who has never heard of Indian Terrain forms an impression in about a second.

The idea they carry is already written in the brand strategy: menswear for the many terrains of modern Indian life. Aspirational enough to look good, accessible enough to be part of a real life.

The word that matters is terrains — plural. The brand is not about one setting. It is about a man moving between settings in the same clothes: the meeting, the drive, the evening. A garment that only works in one of those is not the brand.

Terrain	The moment	What it has to say
Work	Office, commute, the meeting	He looks like he belongs there without looking like he tried too hard.
Transition	The car, the walk between two places, the wait	The most valuable of the three and the least photographed, because it is not a destination. This is the brand's own territory.
Life	Home, evening, the weekend	The same clothes as the work frames, worn loose. Nothing swapped out for the occasion.

The single test

Could the same man, in the same clothes, walk out of one banner and into another without changing? If not, the set has drifted into being about occasions rather than about a wardrobe.

This chapter is organised by category, in the same order as the listing-image chapters. Each category has its own banner set. The rules below apply to all five.

Applies to every category

Rules for every banner

The three terrains

Every banner belongs to one of three. Shoot across all three rather than settling into whichever is easiest to find.

Terrain	The moment	What it has to say
Work	Office, commute, the meeting	Dressed for work rather than dressed up.
Transition	The car, the walk between two places, the wait	Not somewhere he has arrived. This is the one to shoot most of.
Life	Home, evening, the weekend	The same clothes as the work frames, worn loose. Nothing swapped out.

Light

Quality	Hard and directional. Real sun, or a single hard source standing in for it. Soft, flat or overcast light will not work for this brand.
Shadow	Treat the shadow as part of the composition rather than as something the light leaves behind — a window frame thrown across a wall, a shutter pattern, the edge of a building cutting into the frame.
Warmth	Warm — skin and surfaces both. Avoid cool, blue or grey-cast treatments. Three reference photographs in this chapter run cool and one runs neutral. They are marked in their captions and they are not the grade to copy.
Contrast	High. Do not lift the shadows flat in post. Two reference photographs here are flatter than this. They are marked in their captions and they are not the grade to copy.
One grade across the set	Settle the warmth and contrast once and hold it for every banner. When two of these sit side by side on a page they should look like the same shoot on the same day, not two shoots edited separately.
Depth	Something in every frame should be soft — a foreground element close to the lens, a figure passing, a shadow moving across a wall. Never him, and never the garment. He can walk and stride as much as the scene needs; he just has to come out sharp.
Time of day	Early morning, late afternoon or evening. Avoid midday, when the sun sits too high to throw a shadow with any shape to it. Evening and interior scenes can use artificial light, as long as it stays hard and comes from one side.

The movement device

Every banner needs one thing in the frame that is soft or moving. It is never him and never the garment. He can walk, stride or turn — he just must not blur.

Use one of these	How to shoot it
Shoot through something	Put an object close to the lens and let it go out of focus — a railing, a doorway edge, foliage, a light.
A figure passing	Someone crosses in front of the camera and blurs. He stays sharp.
A moving shadow	A shadow crosses the wall behind him during the exposure, so its edge comes out soft.
Depth by focus	Let the background fall out of focus so he is the only sharp thing in the frame.

Rule	Detail
He is always sharp	Use a shutter fast enough to freeze him. Nothing soft is ever him or the garment.
Nothing crosses his face	A blurred element can pass beside him or behind him. Never across his head or the chest of the garment.
Him moving does not count	A man walking through an otherwise sharp frame has not met this rule. Something other than him has to be soft.
One per frame	One soft foreground, or one passing figure, or one moving shadow. Not two.
Keep it off the clear third	Put the movement on his side of the frame. The clear third stays clear.

Every banner needs an empty third

Rule	Detail
Subject to one side	Never centred. Place him in the left or right third and leave the opposite third clear.
Declare the side first	The side is fixed per category and must not change between banners in that category.
Which side, by category	T-shirts & Polos, Shorts, Jeans and Trousers — leave the right third clear. Shirts — leave the left third clear.
What the clear third needs	Plain wall, sky or floor, with no detail, no pattern and no hard edge cutting through it. It also needs enough tone to hold type: a pale headline wants a mid or dark area behind it, a dark headline wants a light one.
Leave more than feels right	The empty third looks excessive through the viewfinder and correct on the page. Headlines are always longer than expected.

Shoot every scene twice

One photograph cannot serve every banner on the site. A wide desktop banner and a tall phone banner cannot be cut out of the same picture without losing either him or the space for the words. So shoot each scene twice — once wide, once upright. Same light, same clothes, same place. Only the camera turns.

The wide picture — shoot it 3:2	Shape	Delivered at	How much of the picture is left after the crop
Homepage banner, desktop	2.4 : 1	2560 × 1067	a little under two thirds of the height
Collection banner	3 : 1	2560 × 854	half the height
Email header	2 : 1	1200 × 600

The upright picture — shoot it 2:3	Shape	Delivered at
Homepage banner, phone	0.59 : 1	750 × 1271
Social feed	1 : 1	1080 × 1080
Social story	9 : 16	1080 × 1920

Where to put him in the wide picture

Both wide banners above are cut out of that one 3:2 photograph, and each is taken from the middle — so the narrower the banner, the more of the top and bottom is thrown away.

At 2560 pixels across, the photograph is 1707 pixels tall. The collection banner keeps 854 of them — half. Everything that matters has to sit inside the middle half of the frame, because that is all the shallowest crop will show.

So plan the photograph in two parts:

Part of the picture	What has to be inside it
The middle half, top to bottom	Him from head to feet, and the clear space for the words. Every wide banner is cut from inside this band, so anything that falls outside it will be lost on at least one placement.
The outer quarters	Background only. Nothing essential — no face, no hem, no headline.

If a banner really does need him head to toe at category-header shape, shoot that separately rather than trying to cut it out of this picture.

Category 1

T-shirts & Polos

The most relaxed of the five. With no construction to photograph, these frames live entirely on light and posture — a flat-lit tee banner has nothing to hold the eye.

Hero · 2:1 · Life A kitchen late in the day. He stands centre-right against a plain wall, with a dark doorframe just catching the left edge of the frame. The wall beside him is clear enough to carry a headline.

Hero · landscape · Transition A long run of textured plaster beside a parked scooter, with him held well to one side and a clear run of wall alongside.

Collection · 3:2 · Transition Walking a bicycle across an open plaza in low sun, with a long shadow running out behind him and plenty of open paving to one side.

Portrait · Life A garden path with a dog. A green leaf sits close to the lens across the lower corner and falls completely out of focus — that is the effect to aim for.

Portrait · Transition Crossing a street mid-stride with figures blurred behind him. The light is hard and clearly coming from one side.

Portrait · Life Reclining against plain plaster, with a large quiet area of wall above him. Plaster photographs as texture rather than as a flat surface, so check the clear area by eye before you shoot.

Portrait · Life Reclining on stone steps, shot from directly above. Useful for the pose and the overhead camera angle.

For this category	Specification
Text side	Right. Every banner in this category leaves the right third clear.
Terrain mix	At least one work, two transition, two life. Shoot the work frame first.
Register	Off duty — hands in pockets, nothing formal.
Styling	The tee or polo carries the colour. Repeat the same trouser and shoe across the category.
Watch for	Flat light. With no seams or structure in the garment, these frames fail first when the light has no direction.

Category 2

Shirts

The widest range of the five, and the category that has to carry the brand's smart-casual claim in both directions at once.

Hero · landscape · Transition Leaning against a sunlit wall. Someone passes close to the lens and blurs, and their shadow travels across the wall behind him — he stays sharp against both. Two thirds of the wall are clear.

Portrait · Work Shot from above as he walks across stone. Out-of-focus shapes sit between the camera and him, which is what gives the frame its depth.

Portrait · Life Two men in a courtyard in warm light, shirt worn open. Useful for showing the shirt off duty with more than one person in frame.

For this category	Specification
Text side	Left. Every banner in this category leaves the left third clear. This is the one category that runs opposite to the other four.
Terrain mix	One work, one transition, one life as a minimum.
Register	Buttoned at a desk and open on a terrace — show both, on the same shirt where possible.
Movement	Something in every frame is soft or moving, and it is never him. Two people in shot does not count.
Watch for	How the collar sits — the one detail still visible at hero scale.

Category 3

Shorts

The most seasonal of the five and the one where hard light matters most. Warm, sunlit, at ease — a shorts banner in flat grey light sells nothing.

Portrait · Life Standing under a concrete overhang with hard sun raking across the structure behind him. The camera sits slightly below eye level and the edges of the frame fall out of focus.

Portrait · Life Seated on warm stone, cropped at the shoulders. This reads as a detail rather than a scene, so use it as a supporting image rather than a hero.

Portrait · Life Two men on steps, caught mid-movement, shot close enough that the two of them fill the frame.

Portrait · Transition Standing on a pavement with the background falling soft behind him, and a large quiet area beside him for type.

For this category	Specification
Text side	Right. Every banner in this category leaves the right third clear.
Terrain mix	Life and transition only. Do not shoot shorts in the work terrain.
Register	Warm, sunlit, at ease.
Movement	Something in every frame is soft or moving, and it is never him. A lively scene that is sharp throughout does not count.
Watch for	Keep the hem and the leg opening clearly in shot. Crop on the garment, not the body.

Category 4

Jeans

Jeans sit naturally in transition and life. The lighting rule tightens here: keep the shaded side more open than for any other category, because a leg broken into a bright half and a dark half makes the wash unreadable.

Portrait · 3:4 · Transition Granite steps with three men, one turning back towards the camera. Two figures stand close to the lens on either side and both fall out of focus, which frames him without crowding him.

Portrait · 3:4 · Transition The same steps, camera dropped to the step below. A shoulder passes close to the lens and dissolves almost entirely, leaving him sharp against it.

Portrait · 4:5 · Transition Mid-stride across a crossing with the camera down at kerb height. Everything is sharp here, so take the stride and the low angle.

Portrait · 4:5 · Transition Back view against a closed shutter, the full leg running down to the boot. Shows the back of the garment and how the hem breaks over the shoe.

Portrait · tall · Life Seated against stone, looking away, with a large quiet area beside him for type.

For this category	Specification
Text side	Right. Every banner in this category leaves the right third clear.
Terrain mix	At least one work, two transition, two life.
Distance	Full length, with the hem and the break over the shoe inside the frame.
Movement	Something close to the lens and well out of focus, on his side of the frame. Never him.
Light	Hard and keyed from one side, as everywhere else — but open the shaded side further than any other category, so the wash stays readable down the whole leg.
Watch for	The back rise twisting — visible at hero scale.

Category 5

Trousers

The line of the leg is what makes a trouser look expensive, and it needs distance to read. Full length or near it, always — a cropped trouser banner loses the only thing that separates a good trouser from a cheap one at this scale.

Hero · extra-wide · headline already on it Two men against open sky, shot from below, with a headline already set into the frame. Useful for seeing how much clear space a headline actually takes up.

Portrait · Transition Walking through a corridor of plain planes with one hard shaft of light across the back wall. The planes fall out of focus, so the depth comes from the lens rather than from the location — this one could be built in a studio.

Portrait · Transition Crossing a street with a bicycle. Two soft elements close to the lens bracket him on both sides.

For this category	Specification
Text side	Right. Every banner in this category leaves the right third clear.
Terrain mix	At least one work, two transition, two life.
Distance	Full length or near it, always.
Movement	Something in every frame is soft, and it is never him. Mid-stride suits this category, but his stride is the pose — something else still has to be soft.
Watch for	The break over the shoe, and a leg twisting at the side seam. Both visible at hero scale.

When to reshoot

A banner fails if

There is nowhere for a headline to go. The subject fills the frame, or the empty area is busy.

The text area sits on a different side from the other banners in the same category.

The light is flat or overcast. No shadow shape, no direction.

Midday sun. Overhead light throws no usable shadow and puts the eyes in the dark.

Nothing around him is soft. No soft foreground, no passing figure, no travelling shadow — the picture reads as a catalogue shot taken somewhere nice. Him walking does not count on its own.

The blurred element crosses his face or the chest of the garment.

The garment itself is soft because he moved. He may move; he may not blur.

The frame is centred and symmetrical.

The scene reads as an occasion rather than a day — a wedding, a party, a holiday.

The clothes could only work in that one scene.

Signage, logos or a recognisable brand is visible in the background.

Anything essential sits in the outer edge that the 3:1 collection crop will remove.

The portrait version was not shot for that scene. Most traffic is on a phone.

Files

What to deliver

Item	Specification
Capture	Frame wider than the final crop on both the landscape and the portrait version, and shoot at the largest file size the camera offers. Cropping in afterwards costs nothing. A frame shot too tight cannot be opened back out.
File type	JPEG. Banners are never cut out — the scene around him is the point of them.
Colour	sRGB for the web, full-resolution master retained.
Grade	One grade across all five categories. Warmth and contrast held to the same standard, so the homepage reads as one brand rather than five separate shoots.
Naming	Category, terrain, orientation. For example tshirts_life_land