Blue Stop sells seafood. Octopus, squid. The call came with a date that couldn’t move: an industry fair opened the following week, and the catalogue for the stand still had no photographs.
When the date is set by an event rather than by the studio, the project stops being a question of speed and becomes a question of order. What follows is that order.
What was settled before a camera came out
Contract and deposit invoice went out by email before the shoot. It looks like paperwork, and on a comfortable deadline it is. With a fair the following week it’s the opposite: it’s what lets the work start without waiting on anything else.
An urgent project rarely falls apart at the shoot. It falls apart because someone is waiting on a confirmation, a detail or a signature nobody asked for in time.
The moodboard was agreed on the day
Not the usual way and not the ideal one, but on this deadline it was the right one: the visual reference was settled with the client on the day of the shoot, in front of the product, instead of going back and forth by email for half a week.
The advantage is that it gets decided against what’s actually there: the real product, its real colour, the real packaging. The condition is that the client is available that day. If they are, half a week is saved.
The preview went out unretouched, on purpose
Two days after the shoot the client had images. Unretouched.
This is what almost no short deadline makes use of. A fair catalogue isn’t laid out with finished photographs: it’s laid out as a mock-up, and for the mock-up you need to know which image goes in which slot, in what format and with how much air around it. A preview is enough for that.
While the client laid it out, retouching carried on in parallel. The final images dropped into slots that had already been decided.
There’s one condition for this to work, and it’s the usual one: the preview is delivered as a preview, and the level of finish is agreed on one image before it’s applied to the rest.
A separate series with the product in its packaging
Alongside the product itself, the product was photographed in its branded packaging, as a series of its own.
At a fair that isn’t an extra. The visitor to the stand isn’t buying the octopus, they’re buying a supplier: what they look at is the format, the packaging, how the goods arrive. The product on its own sells the goods; the product in its packaging sells the company.
The order of the day was set by the product, not by us
All the goods arrived frozen, and that fixes the running order in one direction only: frozen first, defrosted after. There’s no going back.
They’re two different products in front of the camera. Frozen, seafood carries frost, a matte surface and muted colour; defrosted, the tone shifts, it gains shine and it releases water. Both images are needed, because the buyer sees the goods in both states: as they arrive and as they’re cooked.
What that means in practice is that every frozen-state shot has to be settled before anything starts — light, framing, composition. Whatever wasn’t shot while the product was frozen can’t be shot that day at all.
It’s the kind of decision that doesn’t show in the final photograph and that, on a one-week deadline, is the difference between delivering and not delivering.
What’s left
The client built the fair catalogue from these images and made the opening.
“Working with Marina has been a pleasure. From the first moment she was fast, attentive and professional, and she adapted perfectly to everything we asked for. She understood our needs very well and made the whole process much easier. We’re delighted with the result and with the experience of working with her. Highly recommended.”
Luis Viviàn, Blue Stop — Google review, translated from Spanish
Something reusable came out of it too: the packaging material works just as well for the website and the listing, not only for the stand.
Got a date that doesn’t move?
A fair, a launch, a campaign with a fixed day. The earlier the project comes in, the fewer things have to be decided in a hurry.
