Jul
12
After visualising the new packaging destined for the supermarket shelves all that was left was to shoot it.. Oh, if was ever as simple as that.
Nuances of slight misrepresentation of product needed greatly to be avoided (because ALL cheese is not equal) – and a pragmatic attack of the core elements needed to sell the product need strictly to be adhered to. ‘It takes time to make good cheese’ says a poster on the wall and much the same can be said about a good photograph.
Adapting the artistic license of the Advertising Agency into approved imagery accepted by client, supplier and said Agency can make you smile without the utterance of the word ‘cheese’ 🙂 It did make me smile though when the agency commented ‘You’ve made great use of the natural light.. Was that there when you shot it?’ In fact, not.
Sequence of image production from reccie to final shot
Making a hard cold production environment into a warm cosy happy feely sort of place – like the poster says, ‘..takes time.’ Not ‘just’ the time of being there and setting it up, but the time invested in previously creating similar sorts of images and calling on that experience to make this one work.
 Choosing the location on the reccie as a suitable place to portray and having the finished result already composed in my head calls on those times. Having willing helpers on site sharing the vision and willing to make things happen is a added bonus.
What not to do is as important as what it is neccesary to do. In this instance I arrived in a Transit Van complete with 8′ church pew seats to be used as shelves and a circular saw and tool kit to fit them on site if required – (for another shot, but I’ll come back to that later). Oh, and some Industrial Ladders and a 9′ tripod.
On the reccie the storeroom was a spacious cavern of available space, on the day of the shoot production had been busy and filled it with cheese. That’s what it’s there for after all, however the space was gone and some severe remodeling of the layout was required to give us the basis of our requirements and provide access to some electrical power ‘just over there behind those 5 deep cheese trolly’s’.
I had set up the tripod and camera connected to a computer to provide on site approval and commenced building the shot. During the set up shots were taken to check on the progress and I’ve edited them together here out of interest.
The final shot has yet to be decided. Perhaps later when the packaging is produced I’ll add an image here, in the meantime here’s one I prepared earlier.
Master Cheese Maker at work