Scoop Beauty - A Collaborative, Creative (and very fun) shoot

I had worked with Ashleigh from Start with Stop. before but on a totally different project as it involved going to London to shoot some lifestyle photos (the project is on hold because of covid).

So when she got in touch with me with a very funky mood-board for some creative product photography, I was immediately in! Ashleigh wanted to have three different types of sets, the first ones would be colourful but really simple just showcasing what would be in each Scoop Beauty bundle, the second one she had drawn what she had in mind for each, creative, original but still showcasing the products, the third being the crazy creative extra ones. She also wanted some GIFs and they work wonderfully on social media (like the one above)

I usually (90%) of the time handle the creation of mood-boards and sourcing of props, but here my client was Scoop as much as Start with Stop (for portfolio purposes) so Ashleigh handled the sourcing and most of mood-boarding. (I had sent her prior to this my existing creative board on Pinterest from she started to create her own)

All things considered now, we had way much more than we needed, but always best to have more than not enough when creativity is flowing! (and let me tell you, it was!)

First step was to create fake clouds, as the stylist/set designer my job here is to make the set as close as possible as what she had in mind or change it slightly to what I think is best, this was a literally two women job it took us a full day of styling and shooting, on my own, it would probably have taken me thrice the time! (you can see in the top right-hand corner the drawn mood-board)

The rest of the day consisted in attaching nail polish to threads, making more cloud, making fake Ice-cream (Ashleigh nailed the mixing!!), using lots of icing and sprinkles, picking colours for sets, cutting paper on the floor, being extra messy, eating chocolate for energy and ending with exhaustion and a lot of satisfaction in a job greatly done.

And now if you want to have a look at the drawings below that Ashleigh had done and at the photos underneath and tell me, how well did we do? You can see slight variations that we decided were better, but overall, I think we did pretty good!

Do note that the cotton clouds have been slightly photoshopped in post-prod by me though!

Once these sets were done, we went a tad crazier, as in, it wasn’t just about the products but about creating very cool visual content, You can’t even imagine the state of the studio after 8 hours straight of styling, fake ice-cream making and shooting… But Oh how fun it was!

Mid-day selfie in an already messy studio

This has probably been my favourite 2020 project (and what a year it has been?!) as a creative photographer and stylist, this is the type of shoot where I shine the brightest because I have so much fun, and also working with someone else was so fricking great, I know I work well with Ashleigh, which is not something easy between two introverts!

But I think our creativity and the fun we had during that shoot really appears in the quality of work we realised together!