A Grand Ol’ Thyme!
Happy Wednesday everyone! I have a story for you about a client who we all know very well around Studio13.
Sandy Clamme has been a client with us for over 20 years through her different professional transitions, as well as our own, and has been loyal as ever. She has recently relocated to Chicago to be the Director of Advertising with Fresh Thyme Market, a quickly expanding grocery store focused on healthy, real food, and dietary supplements for an overall healthy life.
Before Sandy came into this position, Fresh Thyme had been using primarily stock photography in their marketing materials. Now there isn’t anything wrong with stock photography, but custom photographs make it so much easier to accurately portray your brand (and you can be sure that your competitors aren’t using the same images as you!). Also, with this company growing quickly, a national stock usage fee can be costly.
That being said, the photography market in Chicago is also pretty pricey (as with other major cities like New York or LA), so Sandy knew that she would not only get incredible quality, high-end food photography from Studio13, but also avoid the upcharge from the Chicago photographers.
The challenge of this job was working remotely. Since Sandy is a very busy member of the Fresh Thyme team, she didn’t have time to take whole days out of her schedule come down to Indianapolis to art direct for us. Instead, she and Lesle had a series of pre-production meetings via phone where Sandy explained her vision for the project (a fresh and wholesome farm-to-table feel) and sent examples of lighting styles (to reflect a casual but elegant tone). Lesle then created a style guide, which she sent to the client for approval, and went prop shopping. After completing the style guide and prop shopping Sandy handed the project off to Augie Vidackovic who was the lead creative for the holiday book. He was just awesome!
For the day of the shoot, we hired one of our favorite food stylists: Luis Rub out of Cincinnati, Ohio. He had the wonderful job of choosing fresh and colorful side dishes to accompany the client’s main dishes. And I’ll let you in on a little secret…
Even though we would technically call this “studio photography” we shot this job right in our house! Sandy and Augie were looking for a farm to table look and Sandy thought our dining room table—made out of reclaimed wood—was perfect for her vision.
Since we coordinated this job remotely, we also had to text Augie shots for approval before we moved on. It’s incredible how much technology has allowed us to do for clients who are hundreds of miles away!
These images we took were featured in Fresh Thyme’s Thanksgiving and Christmas advertisements last year, and boy did they make me hungry (even after eating full holiday meals!).
Tune in later to our blogs where we revisit this client, but this time, in architecture! Have a good week!
