We photograph brands, venues, products and events. Stills for a menu, a booking page, a website header and the social feeds, out of one session.
A photograph has to work on its own. There is one frame and one look at it, so the lighting, the framing and the retouching all have to hold up by themselves. Tawfik Cheikhdouar has worked as a photographer since 2012, and the lighting and lenses come through Heero Cam.
01. The shot list, and what each picture is for
We start from where each picture ends up - a menu, a booking page, a website header, a printed board, a post. That settles the crop, and the crop settles the lighting, so both are decided before anything is set up.
The list reaches you with the use written beside every line: rooms, dishes, products, faces, and the wide frames that hold a place together. You approve a set of jobs rather than a number of pictures, and we tick them off through the session.
02. The session
A venue is shot to the light. We move room by room at the hour that suits each one, and hold the same handling between them so the pictures read as one place. Food is photographed as it leaves the pass, because a plate has only a few minutes in which it looks the way the kitchen sent it.
Products get a table, controlled lighting and as many angles as the listing asks for. People are framed so the same picture can be cropped tight for a profile and wide for a header. Events are photographed while they happen, from inside the room rather than from a set-up.
03. Selects and retouching
You see the whole take as a gallery and mark the frames you want. Retouching starts after that, on what you chose, so the work goes into the pictures you will actually use.
Chosen frames get colour correction and a clean-up - a stray reflection, a crumb, a cable in the corner - then export at print size and at web size, in the crops each place needs: square, upright and wide.
What you get
A shot list with the use written beside every picture, approved before the session.
The whole take in a gallery to choose from, with retouching on the frames you pick.
Every chosen picture at print size and at web size, cropped square, upright and wide.
Lighting and lenses through Heero Cam, so a dark dining room gets lit rather than pushed up the ISO.
