Custom Photo Brief
Find out exactly which photos would make someone reach for your product.
- The exact photos your brand needs, in priority order, described so clearly you can picture them before the camera comes out
- The photos that make your product look worth its price, from my own award-winning work in luxury goods
- The one photo that looks like a flaw, but persuades harder than the polished ones. For a distillery it turned out to be the reject bin, photographed beside the keep pile. Every competitor claims exacting standards. Only you can show what the standard costs you.
- A shoot breakdown that says exactly which photo goes where, and why the store shelf, your online product page and your social media each need a different one
Your Custom Photo Brief
What you said
You make small-batch spirits from groundfall orchard fruit, in a converted equipment shed outside Duncan, with arrangements across six valley orchards and some heritage varieties nobody grows commercially anymore. Two pairs of hands. Three products.
The slowest step is sorting, and you were clear that everyone gets this wrong. They assume the still is the bottleneck. It is the table.
The difference the pictures have to make visible
A larger competitor buys juice to a specification and hits the same number every year. You cannot, and you have stopped pretending to, which is why the orchard and the year go on the label. That is a strong story and it is currently invisible.
The frames
01 The label, square on, in even daylight. The least interesting photograph on the list and the one you will use most. Shot once, correct forever.
05 The reject bin, beside the keep pile. Both in frame, so the proportion reads. Every competitor claims exacting standards. You can show what the standard costs you.
06 Crates of collected fruit in the truck bed. This is the picture of the sentence that converts.
“A remarkable ability to understand not only our vision, but also the craft distilling industry, and translate it into stunning visuals.”
Grant Stevely · The Dubh Glas Distillery
The way I plan a shoot, applied to your answers
Before I photograph anything for a founder, I ask the same twelve questions and work out the frames from the answers. I built a brief builder that does that first step the way I do it, so your brief arrives in about a minute instead of waiting on my calendar. It is a strong first draft, built from what you tell it, not a finished plan. If you want to take it further, reply to the email it comes in. That reply lands with me, not the builder.
I shoot for founder-led brands, mostly. Distilleries, breweries, wineries, watchmakers, skincare brands, small makers. The luxury work you will see in my portfolio I chose myself, and most of it has won international awards, twice as Commercial Photographer of the Year.
“Gary demonstrated a remarkable ability to understand not only our vision, but also the craft distilling industry, and translate it into stunning visuals. His work has been nothing short of extraordinary.”
Your brief is built on what makes you different
Every craft label says the same five words. Small batch. Handmade. Locally sourced. A shopper knows those words are free. What separates you is how the thing actually gets made, and these questions are the only way the brief can be specific about that, rather than blend in with everyone else's. There are no wrong answers and nothing is being assessed.
Here is what your brief is being built from
The full brief is being built now and lands in your inbox in a minute or two. Here is a little of what to expect from the first three frames, while you wait.
The one you will use most
Your product square on, in even light, at print resolution on a clean ground. The least interesting photograph in your brief and the one every product page, retailer and press request will ask for. Shot once, correct forever.
The one that proves the claim
Whatever your label says, there is a photograph that proves it. Small batch is proved by a batch you can count. Handmade is proved by the hands that make it, working, not posed. Yours is in the full brief.
The one nobody in your category is shooting
There is usually one frame that your competitors would never publish, because it looks like a flaw until somebody understands it. It is almost always the most persuasive picture you can own. Yours is in the brief, with the reason.