Shooting St. George’s homemade produce

St. George’s are a collective of some 15 green-fingered condiment lovers spread across our local Sussex countryside and neighbouring Kent. Between them, they produce and distribute fine artisan food products, ranging from chutneys and jams to salad dressings and dessert sauces. They recently asked us to capture the love and attention they bring to each of their branded goods, shooting their gift hampers and various homemade products in our studio. Whilst we were happy to be paid in jam, we also encourage local enterprises with start up discounts and arranged to shoot on a reduced fee.

If you have a limited budget or large number of items to photograph, you may find the most practical method is packshot photography where lighting is generally consistent across the range and attention can be paid to composition and clarity of representation. Against a plain white backdrop, your products are free from potential distractions and your branding can speak for itself. White backdrops also enable easier cutting out of products in photoshop (a service we provide), so you have more freedom in how and where you choose to implement your imagery.

As for organising the products themselves, we always welcome client input, but 25 years in the industry have hopefully taught us a thing or two about composition – whilst we might not boast to the lads down the pub about our chutney arranging skills, we secretly love it.