Coffee Shop

Goal: This goal of this project was to visit a local coffee shop and get 4-6 images that can be used to advertise the place of business in a variety of media. The photographs should capture the product and atmosphere of the location.

Challenge(s): How to translate the two main subjects or a coffee shop into a very few set of images without disturbing customers and disrupting business. The final images have to be suitable for several different media types and uses (print and digital, posters, flyers, menus, cards, social media, etc) and match the business.

Solution: With a small number of images requested, I needed to distill the shots as much as possible. My approach was to shoot a few of the specific items that represented this shop best focusing specifically on those items and not doing a “spray and pray” approach. The targets were coffee, pastry, and the shop. To be as flexible as possible, I shot this with only a camera – no lights or reflectors. The folks working that day gave me full run of the shop and helped me in any way they could. They were happy to pose a pour shot and staged a very tasty plum and cream cheese pastry! This was a fun shoot with minimal post processing required. All images were tightly cropped to eliminate distractions.

Result: The requested set of images showing key aspects of the coffee shop. Clients of the shop were not included since I did not have model releases or the time to stage it so people were not identifiable. This also allowed for the delivery of photos that are not tied to a specific time or season making them much more useful and flexible for a variety of materials such as signage, posters, logos, business cards, flyers, social media, menus, announcements, and more.