P52 LEGACY: ASSIGNMENT TWO: THE ONE WITH COFFEE

MEET COFFEE SHOPS BY SHOOTING FOR THEM AND YOU MAY END UP WITH A GIG

ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTIONAL IMAGES FOR A COFFEE SHOP

BRIEF

Your town or area just got a new Coffee Bar in a newly gentrifying part of town. Because you are doing your marketing right, you knew it was opening soon (business licenses are posted in the newspaper) and did some in-person business development. Dropping by with a leave-behind and your portfolio, you impressed the owners right away, and they want to do some images for the various local coffee magazines.

That’s the way you do it, BTW.

They are leaving the style and approach up to you, but they do want to feature a cup of coffee with an ‘early morning’ feel, possibly with a croissant or pastry.

Now, here’s the thing. The shop’s style has to be brought into the images and they are a bohemian, up-scale coffee vendor. One other thing – they can only give you 1 hour for the photography, so planning and production will be an issue for you to deal with.

Asking for permission to shoot in a coffee bar is pretty easy, as most of the owners would love to get four images to use in their marketing. Do a great job and they may want you to do some more for them… as a gig.

PARTICULARS.

  • Images can be tall or wide but should also work in a square format (for Instagram)
  • Color
  • The file should be able to print on cheap paper and still look good (No deep darks with texture)
  • Keep text in mind, but do not let it dictate your composition

This is a style shot. It is not a coffee product shot. You can choose to use interesting post-processing on it if you are so inclined.

Be careful to not have it come out looking like a product shot for a coffee company… this is mood, atmosphere, style, and flair.

And have fun with it.

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MAKE THIS WORK FOR YOU

I had my students go and meet coffee shop owners to get permission to shoot for the class. Many of them ended up getting hired to shoot for the coffee shops or delis or restaurants after the owners saw the photographs.

TIPS:

You cannot take a ton of gear. Chances are they will be open when you are there, so dropping a tripod or a stand or boom could be a problem. You do not want to have someone trip over a piece of gear, and often you won’t have much space to work with.

Look for coffee shops with big windows. Bring white cards and a speedlght with a table stand. Most Speedlights come with a little foot to put on a table or keep the flash on a shelf. Use that.

Bounce light into white cards of reflectors, or into the ceiling for some ambient.

Work fast and make landscape and portrait formatted shots.

Use as many apertures as the lighting will allow.  Shoot at 2.8, 4, 5.6, and 8 if allowed. This will give you a range of depth-of-field images to choose from.

Coffee should always have a tiny bit of bubbles on the edge to show it is freshly poured.

If you are going to have a decorative top, make sure it stands out.

Use dummy cups to get the composition and lighting down, then bring in the real stuff so it is fresh.

Try bumping the table gently to get little ripples on the top of the coffee. This will add freshness and a bit of tension to the image.

Make sure everything is super clean and that wrinkles in the table cloth look real and not sloppy. If you cannot figure it out, steam them to no wrinkles. (You do carry a steamer with your kit, right? I do.)

Have fun with this assignment and know that you will learn a ton in that hour of shooting.

EXAMPLES AND SETUPS.