A scent has no appearance. There’s no texture to show, no product colour, no finish to compare. The only thing you can photograph is the bottle, and the only thing that sells is what the bottle suggests.
The whole project was run remotely: the bottles arrived by courier and the brief was settled by email.
What had to be right
Clear glass with liquid inside. The most unforgiving material in still life: if the background shows through, the object disappears; if it’s killed, the perfume looks like dirty water.
The orange of the label true across every environment. The same bottle on stone, on leather and in smoke has to stay the same orange.
A world, not a background. Stone, mineral, smoke, skin: perfume is bought by association, and the association is the product.
Scale. In a hand, next to a face — a bottle alone on white doesn’t tell you whether it fits in a pocket.
What we shot and built
- Campaign still lifes on stone, mineral and leather, with light built for glass.
- Frames with smoke, for the most atmospheric register of the line.
- A model session: the bottle in hand and beside the face, for social and for the site’s cover.
- Web banners laid out in the same visual language as the photography.
What the brand got
Campaign, model images and website banners from one production, without the client ever setting foot in the studio. The bottles went back with the images.
