19 Oct Our Commercial Photography Process

What goes into a commercial photo session?

Commercial photography is one of the core services we offer and what we love about it is that we believe in the power of a great photograph. We know that our clients usually want to have amazing photos of their products and services for their websites, marketing and sales tools but that it can be intimidating to start the process of hiring a professional. To give you an idea of what it’s like to have commercial photos taken for your business or brand, we’ve outlined our process and here is the breakdown.

 Intake Session – Defining the goals

After your intake session, it’s time to finalize the details in pre-production. We will scout locations, choose optimum times for specific lighting, find any models, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and additional props and set dressings that are needed and finalize the schedule for the shoot. Depending on the scope of the shoot we’ll storyboard or create shot lists to ensure we capture everything that’s needed.

 Pre-production – Setting up for a successful production

The next step is for us to begin pre production to figure out the logistics and create a plan for executing the project. Depending on the scope of your project, we will work with you to start selecting locations for shots, building a shot list, scripting any messaging or interview questions, storyboarding and scheduling talent and crew. We’ll work with you here to ensure the project’s concept and scope remains on track and on budget. We’ll send over storyboards so you can start to visualize the direction of the video and how it’s taking shape. We love this step because it’s where our clients start to see how their project is evolving.

 Production – Making the vision a reality

Finally onto the fun part, the photo shoot! In this stage we’ll utilize everything we defined in pre-production as a roadmap for a smooth and efficient shoot. Our photographers will act as “directors” on-set, directing any talent and ensuring the artistic direction of the shoot is met with lighting and of course the images they capture. Attention to detail is the strength of our photographers and their goal is to capture the images the best way possible! Our photos should be able to be viewed or used with minimal enhancements and retouching needed in post production. We aim to capture imagery the right way, the first time and in that way we safeguard against any surprises or extra work at the end of your project.

 Post-Production – Bringing it all together

The final stage is post-production where we take your images from great to amazing! We’ll retouch and enhance your images and add any additional artistic items to give them a fully polished look. This part of our process is where we take the time to really scrutinize our work and finalize each photo so that’s it’s flawless, but also natural. For skin tones we always balance the natural look of the skin with light retouching to remove imperfections without creating the airbrushed look and for lifestyle photography we remove any unwanted or distracting items that are unable to be removed during production (i.e. signs, power lines, damage to walls, etc.). Our goal with post production is to take an already great image and give it the right amount of editing so that it looks completely natural yet flawless! We should mention that all of this work is done in-house by our photographers to ensure we keep to our XSIGHT standards.

Original

 

Lightly Enhanced

Tone and color adjustments for a natural look

Original

 

High End Retouching

Compositing and detailed retouching to remove signage and photography lighting equipment

Original

 

High End Retouching

Retouching, compositing and effects 

It’s all part of our process to give our clients a product that speaks to their audience and is true to their brand. As a company that started in photography ourselves, we take pride in producing ultra high quality imagery that is a true representation of a brands image and speaks to their audience.

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