Corporate Photography for the Pantherella AW2012 Brochure

Towards the end of summer last year I was contacted by Pantherella, a local manufacturer of high quality English socks with a proposal for some corporate photography. They were about to start work on their new advertising campaign and needed a photographer to get the product photography and lifestyle photography for their new brochures. Of course I jumped at the chance to be involved in such a large campaign. Read on to see how I got on!

The Pantherella family has three main brands, Pantherella Men, Pantherella Women and Scott Nichol. Each brand has a distinctive look – whereas Pantherella man is aimed at the discerning English businessman, Scott Nichol is at the upper end of the outdoor sock market. Pantherella has an excellent reputation within the industry, so it was a pleasure to be able to work with them to create their brochures.

Whereas I’d be doing the product photography side of the shoot (hundreds of socks on fake legs in front of a white background) in my own studio environment, there were still the ‘lifestyle’ shots to be taken – those showing the socks in ‘typical’ situations. However, as the brief was for quirky shots, you may not find too many of the following lifestyle images ‘typical’!

Before we started on the shoot, I decided that because the focus of these shots was the socks, and because I needed to bring out the quality of these socks in a single image then I needed to shoot the products a certain way. There was only one choice for the job, and that was for the Canon 100mm f2.8L IS macro lens. Utterly sharp as a knife with a beautiful optical quality, combined with my 5D Mark II left no doubt that I’d be able to show the quality of the garment.

The shoots took place over a period of a few days. The first day was at The City Rooms in Leicester, where we were shooting Pantherella Men – the main brand. I was working alongside the marketing team at Pantherella, as well as Ian from The Message – the design agency, so I decided to shoot tethered to my laptop so they could check the quality and look of the images as they were being shot.

As we were shooting inside, and after dark, I used my Canon 430EXII speedlight, married to my PocketWizard FlexTT5 and shooting through a large softbox in a one light configuration to light the scenes. The lighting was consistent to ensure that there was a uniform look and feel throughout the brochure.

There were a lot of socks to get through, so having the lights set up, shooting tethered and using the PocketWizards allowed us to move from product to product to complete the shoot efficiently.

A few of the quirkier shots needed to be taken outside, so later on in the week we got a few more…

… some even using my landscape photography experience!

I did say that some were quirky!

The next day we moved on to The Exchange Bar in Leicester to do the Pantherella Women shoot. Again, the 5D Mark II, 100mm Macro, Pocketwizard combination was used for the consistent look I was striving for.

Those cupcakes didn’t last long after the shoot!

The alcoves and scenery in the bar were put to good use…

… and again the quirky props were brought out to paint a scene.

Finally, at the weekend we ventured outside to shoot the Scott Nichol range. Again, the same equipment was used for consistency – although this time I wasn’t tethered to the laptop!

Gorgeous natural light was enhanced with a golden reflector towards the end of the day…

… whereas earlier on it was full speed ahead with the PocketWizards and softbox!

We even shot at a local rugby club to paint the picture for the Scott Nichol Team Collection.

Within a few weeks of the shoot, after I’d done my initial edit and passed the photos over to The Message for pagination, the brochures arrived. Pantherella couldn’t have been happier, and I was delighted to see how well the photographs had come out in print. The brochures were extremely well received by all, and the brochures and photographs from the shoot were used as a major part of Pantherella’s advertising at the Pitti trade show early in 2012.

If you’d like me to do some corporate photography or product photography for your company, then contact me, either via my contact form, or on 07530 242809 to discuss your requirements in detail.