Commercial Advertising Wine Photography

Nailing It: In Part 1 I talked a bit about some of the technical difficulties and how to overcome them in photographing red wine bottles in a studio set up for advertising. When you need to set up a mini on site studio in Los Angeles, it important to think about what gear you’ll need to bring. Basically everything and then some. I can’t stress enough how important it is to bring back up for your back up gear and scrims and extra light stands and extension cords, gaffing tape, gels and more. Thing is when you have you client, their staff, an advertising agency, and art director and a deadline for print and advertising {which is typically yesterday} there’s allot of your client’s money on the line. Part of my job as photographer is to solve problems on the spot, make it look easy, have everything at my finger tips {extra gear} and nail the images. For my client, there’s allot of pre-planning, day of planning, resources and money that have gone into the shoot. The shoot below, total budget was something like $15k. Ignited did and amazing job with the layout.
Client First – Always: To secure my images on all shoots I always shoot with a dual card slot camera with two cards {shooting RAW to both cards}: a CF card in one slot and a SD card in the other. After the shoot, back at the studio, one card gets downloaded and backed up to three drives. One drive comes home with me and the other card comes home with me too. Call me paranoid, but I’m extremely careful with my client’s digital assets. As discussed in Part 1, minimizing extraneous reflections are key. For the Archaval campaign, the main light bank for the studio shots were switched to camera left. Something that is often overlooked is attitude. Always keep a positive attitude on the job, the tone of emails and on the phone. I do everything I can to make sure my client is totally taken care of before the shoot, on the day of the shoot and after the shoot. Turn around time is a matter of days. Not weeks. Follow up with a thank you not and a gift to show you appreciate them. People like to be treated special. Everyone has day to day pressures and doing something kind makes a better day for them. Plus in todays connected world there is an abundant choice of who to work with. The pool of photographers is very, very deep. So what are you going to do to make you stand out from the crow and make them remember you?
The Mood and Tone of the Campaign: The design team at Ignited wanted a visceral, lifestyle and more real approach to Archaval which is a high end wine, so we photographed allot in natural light at a great little Italian restaurant in Lindero Canyon. The mood boards used a low key approach with marble, wood and organic earthy tones. Ignited’s layout and graphics impart elegance and style to campaign. The color scheme of the restaurant was perfect for the shoot. The hardest part was grading the color to match the color temperature of the studio session. The labels had to match and in the natural light situation, the product is prone to color contamination. Plus the color cast of shade is blue which introduces a second variable. Shooting RAW gives more latitude for the final color grading.