Last Monday the Intern Army and I photographed some food in the studio.
Now you’ve probably noticed – we don’t photograph products or food around here that often – so it’s definitely not one of our ‘specialties’. However – this has been a very interesting and educational process – and I’m not even talking about the taking pictures part. That’s actually the easy stuff. The interesting part has been everything we’ve done to really understand what the client wanted as far as the content of the photos, but more importantly, the overall look, feel, and impression left by the photos – along with how to achieve those impressions that we wanted the viewer to have after seeing each photo.
For example – one of the 20 products we shot is a line of different granola. Instead of just showing good, clear, glossy photos of the granola – you want to show people how they might actually EAT the granola. How it might be used and consumed – instead of just taking beautiful photos of a product, you’re taking beautiful photos of the product in a way that’s familiar to the end user. While at the same time, in line with the style of the brand in its current state, or even helping to redefine the brand in a new way. So different from say, being an arrogant wedding photographer/artist that shoots with THEIR VISION and ONLY their vision – you need to really understand and deliver what your client wants and balance that with whatever artistic ego you feel like holding on to.
And there were a lot of different individual pieces and products – so I brought in the Intern Army and we set up three stations in our Studio.
1. Packaging
2. Raw Ingredients
3. Styled (even though they were all technically ‘styled’)
Oh – and this time I was smart enough to hire our Stylist, LoriGami to work on the shoot with us. While my ego might argue that taking/making these photos is hard work – the truth is that the real reason these photos are successful is because Lori did a great job making everything look amazing. When we needed different options, different setups, or new ideas – Lori handled everything. Props, setups, food wrangling, and more.
All we did as photographers was manage the light, and take the photos. Well – of course light is kind of a big deal – especially if you’ve ever tried taking product photos without proper lighting.
See? – we were like a product-photo-factory that day and we definitely knocked out an amazing number of shots in those 7 hours.
And yes – by the end, we had probably eaten more granola that day than we have all year.
It's true… Lori. was. awesome. Great shoot!
Great products and great pics !!
This was an amazing experience for us at Pure Bliss. All of us were there at on point or another and were amazed at how well managed Mark was in order to get so much done in one day. he hasn't finished the editing yet but so far the photos we have seen have us very excited! Thanks Mark (and Lori)!