Dalstons Natural Ingredients
This was a super-fun brief to photograph for Dalstons Soda, all about celebrating the natural ingredients that go into their drinks cans.
The brief was simple - produce a series of photographs highlighting each of the hero ingredients that makes each flavour. There would be one photo per flavour, plus one with all six*.
All 6 Dalstons Soda flavours
In-keeping with Dalstons’ established aesthetic, the set for each shot should be monochrome, with the background colour corresponding to the colour of the can. For the shot of all flavours, the background would incorporate all the colours.
The mood and feel would be clean and playful, exactly what I like!
These were all shot in my London studio with stylist Felicity Souter. We produced a series of shots that covered all the criteria put forward by Dalstons, and added a playful aspect to each photo too, using balance and levitation!
Making it happen
Lemons, cherries, root ginger, peaches and even rhubarb can be sourced year round either from supermarkets or from specialist shops. However for Elderflower, we had to schedule the shoot for exactly the right time of year. Elderflower blooms in May, so this is when the shoot had to be. I let Dalstons know that I knew of a few elder trees/bushes near the studio, and I simply went out and picked a bagful early in the morning of the shoot day! Foraging for the win!
In the run up to the shoot we had back and forth between me and the brand to talk about how the drinks photographs should look, how we should style the shots, and what the compositions should be.
A technical approach to drinks photography
The benefit of ironing out the details in advance is that it means when it’s time to shoot, the majority of the creative decisions have already been made and in my photography studio we can focus on the technical process of bringing it all together.
Most of these photographs were taken with a two-light set up. I chose to shoot with a relatively hard light source to give the images a sunny feel, and then used a combination of mirrors, white bounce cards, grey bounce cards and black shadow cards to shape and sculpt the light on the subjects. Then, to avoid having too much texture in the background, I put a soft-box on a second flash and used that to light the background boards. Lighting subject and background separately also enabled me to get a hair more visual separation between the two and make the cans ‘pop’ more.
To make the cans levitate, we first made a hole in the back of the can so we could drain the liquid without damaging the appearance (in case the top of the can with the ring pull needed to be seen). This made the can much lighter. We glued it to a transparent acrylic rod with the other end in a grip and simply positioned it where we needed it to be. By photographing the scene twice, once with the subject and once without, it was easy to photoshop out the acrylic rod. It’s all smoke and mirrors baby!
See more work for Dalstons: Dalstons Soda Product Photography
And some more! Dalstons Soda Music Photographs
Take a look at more of my work here.
If you are looking for a professional drinks or still life photographer in London, you can easily get in touch with me, or see some more of my portfolio here.