Organising 90 different styled product shoots for a landscaping company was fairly new to us.
As we got used to capturing pretty, CLEAN, lightweight, like beauty and lifestyle products, shooting for Rock and Soil was definitely an exciting and new experience for us, where we learned a lot.
This process required more strategy and way more physical strength:) Luckily we both have been training, but still ended up with aching body parts by the end of the 3rd 12 hour-shooting day.
Planning this large production was so much easier using a Trello board for pre-production, where we shared a Board with the client and they could place their ideas and inspo images there as well.
Once we got all the stlyed and texture example images chosen in Trello, and got our garage aka my original studio emptied, we were ready to receive for all the products and props.
When a truck loaded with @90 10-50 kg bags arrived from Rock and Soil we knew the workflow would be very different from our regular product shoots.
First, we counted and labelled all the bags with different colors according to their type, like soil, gravel, mulch..etc.
Then we linked the inspo images from Trello next to each product.
We decided to shoot outside, as our garage was already full with all the bags and we expected that this would be dirty, so we better off setting up some lights and shading outdoor and bringing all the bags through the house to our backyard and emptying them there.
We shot the similar set ups, like flatlays after each other, setting up the lighting and camera on stands, so we really “only” needed to swap the product, that also allowed to provide a cohesive look for their webshop.
One new style took about an hour to set up and about 10-15 minutes for do one photo.
We captured a second image with our named sticker with the product, so we knew what we shot later on.
We didn’t expect that we needed to wash and dry all the decorative rocks before shooting, so they wouldn’t be covered with white dust from rubbing against each other in the bag. That process took quite long, but we figured we can speed it up with using my hairdryer:)
Of corse sometimes we forgot to capture a label, or mixed up two styles and had to do some reshooting and tweaking in post production, but overall we didn’t make huge mistakes, which was great:)
In post production, thanks to using the same lighting set up (srtobe studio lighting ) we didn’t have to do too much correction, but we had to make sure that the styled and texture shot of the same product matches in color and brightness perfectly.
Also we had to name the photos, so the client could find them as well.
We used keywords in Lightroom for that and exported the photos named with their keywords.
Overall, we call this project a huge win as we learned a lot, not only about shooting landscape products but also the name and functions of the different soils and sands:)
What makes this shoot really successful is that Rock and Soil was happy with their images.
Client satisfaction is one of the most important factor in a business, and working with a client like Rock and Soil is a true privilege for us.
