Product Photography for Dovecote Northumberland
Product Photography for Dovecote Northumberland
There’s something about luxury home fragrances that I find really intriguing when it comes to photography: how do you capture a smell? The simple answer is that you don’t. What you can capture is the feeling that those scents evoke.
Dovecote Northumberland are a high-end brand and had previously had challenges getting their advertising photography to reflect that. With advertisements set to go into Vogue UK, we needed to produce a range of photographs that showcased the rustic luxury of the brand.
I decided to lean into earth tones, warm neutral palettes, and low contrast images that were calm, clean, and upscale.
The core range at Dovecote Northumberland has around fourteen fragrance options. Deborah, the founder of the company, selected Lemongrass and Ginger as one of her best sellers to focus on for the shoots. The remit was to capture the products in a home environment, and luckily I have a friend who was more than happy to give me free reign of her converted barn for a day.
I also ate her whole box of blueberries. Sorry Shona.
When I first spoke to Deborah at the store I had the idea of capturing the Northumberland Collection in situ. Genius! Take the full range of products for each collection to the location it represents - how hard could that be? It turned out to be very hard. I had completely neglected to factor in things like carrying the weight of my kit and all the products for 40 minutes across sand dunes, up hills in high heat and humidity, and even things like finding uninterrupted views of the castles. I do think it was time well spent. There’s something about real location photography that speaks louder than any studio set up.
It was important that each of the collections be shot as individual items, as groups, and as the full range. It was also key that each collection have its own unique look and feel, but still look similar to the others so as to form a cohesive set of images.
Due to the varying weather conditions, each shoot had different lighting which meant that the Dovecote LR preset I had developed looked slightly different across each collection.
The necessity to photograph on location was not unwelcome, even if the challenges ranged from uncooperative light and tides, to over-inquisitive dogs, sand in the wax melts, and rickety wooden staircase that was out for blood. I am so happy with the final images; they show off both the elegant products and the beautiful region they reflect.
At the time of writing there is one last rage to photograph which is the Escape to Northumberland collection. Inspired by the dark skies park I’m going to take the range to Kielder and photograph them at sunset over the lake. Once again a genius idea, showcasing a sleep range in a beautiful lakeside forest surrounding! I was all set to go back in June until I was notified of road closures. Probably not a bad idea to wait until the bridge is open again because civil twilight in June is around 10-11pm. I’m not sure how much I trust myself driving home around midnight after a full day, especially on unlit un-signposted backroads. Watch this space for some beautiful night time product photography!
