BTS Honey Pot Co

Hey friends! Hope you're ready for another BTS post. I know it's been a minute since the last one but I'm excited to dive right in because this particular project was one of my favorites this year so far. Not just because I'm an actual consumer of this brand but because they were honestly such a breeze to work with. Like we always say, when you say no to clients that don't value your work or try to lowball you, you open up space for clients who will appreciate you and compensate you fairly. Shall we dive in?

Alright, so this was a packed 2-day shoot that was quite the project. We had a lot of moving parts and honestly we were so thankful to have had one of the senior art directors from the company on site to help us move through the shoot. He was also an office fan so we knew we had met our people, haha! Although the overall concepts and styling were "simple," it was far from it. Not only were we shooting almost every single product on their line, we were also photographing various different combos of products that it almost became more complicated to try to find new ways to style the "same" thing. You can ask Elle, this was definitely no easy task but the final work was well worth it. I really wish we could show you some of the final stills but they haven't updated their site so we haven't been able to put this shoot up on our portfolio quite yet. Sigh. Clients am I right? Just kidding we love them but man do we wish they would use the images sooner rather than later! 😅

We had quite a few different sets of images we needed to capture including individual product shots, group shots, combination shots, hand model shots, and several stylized shots that had either a fun textured background or some of our Moodelier props. One of the things that I remember the most about this shoot was Elle expressing her need to do something different (in terms of concepts) and while recording our podcast episode with Little Drill, we were reminded of the fact that clients come to us for what we've already made. Sometimes it's about producing what we're known for instead of feeling like we need to outdo ourselves every time. *saves in a note to remind myself next time I'm out of ideas*

I can't speak a whole lot on the art direction and production side of things as that's Elle's bread and butter but what I will say is that our goal for this shoot was to create fresh new imagery to replace all of Honey Pot Co's current photography. Most of the props used came directly from the products' ingredients as well as some of our gorgeous Moodelier props. As for the set design, we used our trusty particle boards and Elle painted several of them in the brand's colors. Elle also found this really cool texture at the hardware store that she ended up spray painting to create a fun background. Seriously guys, take a trip to your local hardware store because you might be surprised to find some unique items that can easily be turned into a backdrop! 

For the most part, the entire shoot went fairly smooth with a couple of hiccups along the way but what shoot doesn't have them, am I right? We had a few troubleshooting moments including missing a specific product (not our fault lol) and underestimating how large some of our group shots would be. Initially, we thought that we would be able to get away with using our particle boards for a backdrop but that idea was scratched so quick. Check out the image below to see what I mean. Thank GOODNESS we had this large cream colored seamless backdrop that we were able to use at the last minute. Otherwise, who knows what we would have done!

Our lighting was kept pretty minimal as usual. We used one strobe the entire time except for when it came to a couple of the products that had a reflection. For those, we used a softbox to get a non harsh shot of the products and then composited in post to still be able to keep our fun shadows. As for some of our model shots, all I can say is wow. Please, if you have the chance to work with professional hand models.... I cannot recommend it enough. Not only did I save myself SO much retouching but these ladies were incredibly professional and SO easy to work with. Hands can be weird to pose sometimes so having real agency models to work with was the cherry on top. That was actually something that I really loved about the brand too. Their focus on diversity and inclusion meant that they wanted a mix of different skin tones. Absolutely love it!

Finally, when it came to the post-production, there was a quite a bit to do so we definitely had to split the retouching in half and deliver in two rounds. The individual products shots were nice and easy thanks to their beautiful (and matte) packaging but the more stylized shots with more products, props, and unique backgrounds were kind of insane. I'm sure you've all experienced this with crinkly products such as chips or bagged items... Oh man, retouching FOR DAYS but we made it. Also, I definitely had to find a good stock image for a "spray" because there was no way my camera was capturing the *actual* spray from one of their products. Has anyone else had to do this? Definitely let me know. I also had to do quite a bit of work on some of our props as far as matching the color to the brand colors and just general clean up. Overall this project was insane but super satisfactory considering the project itself and how awesome the clients were to work with. Hope you guys enjoyed this BTS post and if you have any questions, feel free to drop them below or in our Slack channel.

Is it the weekend yet?
Arabela