BTS Camelbak

Hi Weekend Club Members! 

Have you joined our new slack workspace yet? If you haven't, make sure you hop over and join the conversation! We've moved some of our posts from discourse over, but we're excited to see what new topics are brought up. We think this space will be much more engaging and interactive. 

Anyway, today I'm sharing some BTS from a few shoots that we did with Camelbak last year. If you've seen any of the final images that we've shared (see them here), you know that these shoots were VERY different from our typical work. Not only are they super outdoorsy, they're more lifestyle and less stylized. 

I don't have a ton of still images from these shoots, so we made an IGTV which you can see here, but for all of you in the club, I wanted to share why we decided to take on this project and how to decide if you should take a job thats outside of the work that you usually do. 

A really long time ago we wrote a blog post about how to decide if you should take a job, you can read it here, but I'll summarize it really quick. We had a professor in college who told us that there are three factors when deciding to take a job - it pays well, you love the client, you love the project. At least two of these need to be in place in order for it to be worth it. If it only pays well and you hate both the client and the project, you will be miserable. If you love the client but hate the project and it doesn't pay well, you may start to resent that client. If you love the project, but hate the client and it doesn't pay well....you get the picture. 

I have a friend who works for Camelbak and he had been telling me for a while that he was trying to pitch us to them. Of course I thought this was so sweet, but I didn't really expect it to happen since our style is so different from what they usually post. When they did eventually reach out, I talked with Cait who would be leading the project, and I had such a good feeling when talking to her. She was super organized, knew exactly what they wanted, was up front about their budget, and I could tell that we would work very well together. We've talked on our podcast about how sometimes you get a vibe from a potential client, sometimes good, sometimes bad; and how it's important to listen to your gut. This was a case where my gut was telling me this would be good even though I wasn't necessarily super excited about the actual shoot. 

They also had a good-sized budget, so two out of the three criteria were in place and we took the job. For the first shoot, there were actually two different days of shooting, one on location at an airstream camp in Russian River, and one in our studio. For the first shoot, they just needed us to book talent, style the clothing and props, and shoot. For the second shoot, they just needed prop styling, lighting, and shooting. This also made it very different from our other shoots where we are involved in every aspect from start to finish. 

Previously we had said that we would never allow a client to retouch our images, but we've realized that a lot of larger clients have in-house employees who they would rather work on post production and so it's something that we've decided we can let go of in the right situations. This did mean that we turned over all the RAW files to them, but our contract clearly states how many of them they can use before they need to pay for more usage. It definitely requires a level of trust and a strong contract in order for us to be able to do this. 

The shoot at Russian River was first, and we booked the cutest family as our talent. I hadn't pulled clothes for a shoot in a very long time, and I was nervous because it was also a very different style than I was used to pulling for. Before Weekend Creative I worked for a magazine and would sometimes pull clothing for fashion editorials which was really different than pulling for a more real-life situation. 

The location was a few hours away from us, so we decided to get an air b&b and make it a little work staycation. For the first few hours of the shoot, we were shooting actual mountain bikers coming down a mountain which was completely different than anything we had done before haha. The second half of the day, we were at the airstream camp, shooting the family in a few different scenarios. It was really nice to work with agency models since we don't get to do that very often for budget reasons. It can be a challenge to work with talent, especially so many (and kids) and it was great for us to get more practice and experience in this area. 

Even though we weren't sure about how much we would like the project, we actually had a ton of fun and it was really nice to be outside and out of the studio for a change. 

The next shoot was some basic product shots on white in our studio. There was some minor styling, but this shoot was definitely more "boring" than what we typically do in studio. While it wasn't the most fun project, it was still so great working with their team, and financially it was worth it as well. 

You'll notice that we didn't include any of the studio images on our site when we put up the work from this shoot. That's because it isn't something that we would necessarily want to do again. We would in the right situation (paid well, and a client we love), but we are big believers in only putting out the work that we want to be hired for. We chose to only put up the images with the family because we ended up loving the project more than we expected, and we would be interested in taking on similar shoots from time to time to mix things up. 

We actually did do a similar shoot with Camelbak again, about a month later at a house in Mill Valley. Those images haven't been released yet, but it was also a really fun shoot. It was with an adult mom and son, and again we just did props, clothing, and photography. We've included some bts from that shoot in the IGTV as well. 

We would love to hear your thoughts on taking jobs that are outside of your typical work, let us know your experiences below!

Is it the weekend yet?
Elle