WEEK 25: Say Cheese!

Arctic Fox will be launching a new catalogue of backpacks early next year, for which our job is to manage product photography. This responsibility was given to me.

Instead of going down the typical corporate photography shoot route, the team decided to approach this project as a lifestyle Instagram influencer would, and feature the backpacks in different authentic settings and showcase them in natural way. The focus then would be on the person in the photo and not always on just the backpack. This would help give the brand more personality and potentially encourage more consumer engagement (especially on Instagram).

Since we chose to follow a more collaborative approach with this project, we promptly took to Instagram to find photographers that would be able to give us the kinds of images we would need. We found many promising candidates who had feeds filled with well-composed lifestyle images. Before making a final decision, we contacted these photographers, briefed them about the project, and asked us to give us a sample image in the same space.

It was at this stage that we got a much clearer understanding of the capabilities of these photographers , and some of the results were quite unexpected. While all of the shortlisted candidates had very nice Instagram feeds, the sample images showed us how well they could understand a brief and add their own creative filter to it without compromising its objectives. Most of the photographers came back with sample images that quite frankly looked like something out of a school photography project. A few of them were late in submitting their sample images, and were immediately ruled out.

Out of at least 15 photographers that we shortlisted, only two came back with images that met the mark. However, the photographer that we finally decided to go with had proactively reached out to us, not the other way around. He was a friend of one of the photographers we had reached out to and he called and asked us to consider him for the job. The sample images he turned in were by far the best of the lot, so the project went to him.

So far, I have had no regrets. In my two years of working at Humour Me, I have realised that finding talent that is both creative and professional is very difficult. But this photographer did a great job – both with his images and meeting all deadlines. But since we have not hired a stylist, it has been my job to coordinate with the models and help them pick their outfits – a task which may sound simple but really isn’t. Overall, even though this project was hectic at times, managing it has not been as difficult as I thought it would be, since I have a team that does their job well.

In other news, our basement is finally ready! There are still a few finishing touches left, but I couldn’t wait for them to be done, so here is a before and after comparison:

Before

After

See you next week!

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