Drink Brand Product Photography for Upstream
Photographing weddings is wonderful, but it’s just as nice to mix things up a a bit. I like shooting something a little different for a change, it keeps me on my creative toes. Food and drink photography is one of my favourite alternatives to my more regular work, after all it combines two of my favourite things: food and photography!
Food and drink photography is wonderful. I’d love to be able to say that it’s easier because inanimate objects don’t fight back, but I’d be wrong. You wouldn’t believe the effort (and swearing) that goes into making a transparent bottle lie still. Or getting a slice of grapefruit to do what it’s told.
Earlier this year I had the great fortune to work with Clearly Drinks. We were working on their upcoming re-brand for their products Upstream and Perfectly Clear. The images were for use in their social media campaigns, with distinctly different target audiences for each brand.
Kids Drinks Product Photography
Perfectly Clear is a sugar free fruity water. They sell big bottles, small bottles, and little bottles designed for kids. As the brand has a strong family focus the lifestyle images had to be tailored to family events. We opted for picnics, family dinners, kids’ sports bag, and beach.
Each of the set-ups required lots of props to sell the lifestyle that the image was focussing on. It’s all too easy to look at a piece of product photography and not appreciate the hours of work that have gone into it. From choosing the setting and props, to lighting, colours, backgrounds, styling, and then tweaking the position of all the elements to within millimetres. It all adds up and that’s before you look at post production!
Speaking of post production, the biggest challenge for this brand was the ‘hero’ shot. Ideally we had hoped to work with splashes of water, but the transparent nature of the bottles meant that the images didn’t pop as much as I hoped. So, as I really don’t like being defeated, I decided to make something a bit quirky. Using a lightbox, some string, and some fresh fruit we made a picture that was very post-production heavy.
We – myself and my wonderful stylist – did spend quite a lot of time shouting profanities at soft fruits. I would love to share, but none of the words we came up with whilst trying to thread cotton through uncooperative blackberries are what you would call “family friendly”.
Please enjoy the before and after images:
Upmarket Drinks Product Photography
The second brand I had been asked to work on was called Upstream. The branding was distinctly different but one that I could identify with much more easily and the images for Upstream came together really quickly.
We opted for some low key photography, as well as rustic inspired brighter images to link into the previous shoots. We used the fruits, vegetables, and aromatics related to the drinks, and then got to work! I was super pleased with how the pictures came out and I’m very proud to have been a part of the project. Putting together the final images was a real “I love it when a plan comes together” moment.
Here’s a few of my favourite images from the shoots.
Behind The Scenes Drinks Product Photography
Normally I don’t do behind the scenes pictures. Mostly because it’s really difficult to take pictures of yourself working when you are working. However, working with the wonderful Jennifer led me to take some images of the work in progress, some of the set ups, and a small selection of the produce we needed to create the images (don’t worry, we ate it all, nothing was wasted). There is also a bonus picture of the two of us smiling after we’d finally finished.
