Product Photography
I have been photographing ALL the wine for Parcelle. They are a specialty wine shop located in Manhattan that offers a carefully curated list of wines. Their wines range from 20$ bottles to 1,000+ bottles. But their approach to wine curation guarantees that everybody bottle you purchase will be amazing and their experts will help you pick out a bottle hand tailored to your unique palette. Whether your buying the 20$ bottle of wine or the 5k$ bottle it will be just what the thing to impress your father in law or remind your wife why she fell in love with you on your anniversary or even just have a really good Saturday night.
I don’t shoot a lot of e-commerce these days but I have an extensive background doing just about every kind of photography under the sun or in studio. Some of my first jobs out of art school where I got a BA in Photography were working for big warehouse photo studios in Chicago. These were giant operations, some the size of an entire city block where dozens of photographers, stylists, art directors and producers shot product photography all day long. A lot of the studios clients were big box retailers and we shot everything and anything that you can buy in a store. And in every way from product silouheted on a white background, fake room scenes in studio, fake beach scenes, to fake Christmas scenes shot outdoors at houses in the suburbs in July. You name it we shot it and it gave me an early education in how to put any job together big or small no matter what the product or situation.
Wine bottles are perhaps one of the most difficult things to photograph. Wine bottles vary in color, shape, transparency and will reflect any object that surrounds it. For Parcelle’s website consistency is key and getting these subtle differences to match across the entire product line is an undertaking. Because of the value of the product photographing offsite wasn’t appealing to the client so I figured out a way to setup a portable photo studio in their office. And do it in a way that guaranteed that every bottle looked consistently the same every time. Also while minimizing subtle variations in the different shapes and colors of the bottles. And on top of all that to do it in a way that makes it cost effective for the client. I could spend an entire day photographing one bottle making sure every highlight was perfect, the background resembled an ancient tuscan winery with a subtle mist wafting in as a grizzled old hand aged from years of winemaking experience pours you the perfect glass. Yes we Definitely Could shoot that but it would take a year to get through 1000+ products and in the end an individual customer might only buy an extra bottle or two. E-commerce photography is about how can we create artwork that is both cost effective and sells more products. Business only works if were all on board working as a team so that we can all be successful together.