Boulder-based photographer Julia Vandenoever recently shared with us a lifestyle project she shot for nutritionist Shalisa Pouw’s new business venture. Shalisa is a certified nutrition coach, fitness instructor, and co-owner of the Pure Barre studio in Boulder.
Julia had worked with Shalisa’s Pure Barre studio numerous times, shooting staff headshots and images of the studio for their website and promotional materials. It was after one of these shoots that Julia and Shalisa began to discuss Shalisa’s new nutrition business that she is getting ready to launch.
Shalisa’s new website will be a place where she can share her recipes, fitness and health tips to help viewers with overall wellness rather than quick-fix dieting. Through talking about this new venture, they had the idea to do a lifestyle shoot featuring Shalisa making food and hosting a dinner party to accompany her new site and promote her business on social media.
The primary focus of the shoot was that it would be evergreen, especially since Shalisa’s site hasn’t launched yet. These images would need to be applicable in all seasons and last for some time until well after the website’s launch.
Before the shoot itself, Shalisa and Julia focused on putting together a shot list and preparing all the materials they would need.
Shalisa had gone food and prop shopping so we started by looking at all the foods, breads, and props that she had bought. We had a loose shot list for how we wanted to spend the day, we knew we wanted to start on food. She had gone outfit shopping as well. In the morning, we went over the details and started out deciding what to shoot and what outfit to wear for each shot.
The whole shoot took place in one day, at Shalisa’s apartment, moving from the kitchen to the rooftop deck where they hosted a dinner party with Shalisa’s closest friends. When they arrived bright and early on the day of the shoot, they were quick to get right to the shoot.
We focused the morning in the kitchen so that we didn’t have as many light changes. We did have another spot near the window where we had some different surfaces. So we would shoot her making the meal, preparing the dish, prepping the food, focusing on the ingredients, her chopping, etc. and then shooting the dish on the counter and then I would bring it over to the spot where there was natural light on some different surfaces so there was variation with each dish.
Shalisa wanted to make sure the images and the food fit in with her branding and her personality, so she chose to style the food herself for the shoot.
It’s something she’s been practicing so she wanted to do it herself to make sure it wasn’t too overdone. She wants the food, her social media and her website to feel approachable.
For the second part of the shoot, they took time to design the table and gave Shalisa’s friends guidance on outfits and direction. By the end of the day, they had captured a ton of great images for Shalisa’s new site, and she was thrilled! Julia recently shared this project in a newsletter, which ended up being one of her most successful emailers. Julia hopes to continue to work with Shalisa as her business grows.
I like the energy of the dinner party, it was fun. The whole day was really fun. It’s hard to pick a favorite part of the shoot because I love shooting food and lifestyle together. I like shoots like this where we’re styling the food and adding the lifestyle component with the human element as well. I love that combination, and through creating our own shoot and working together, we got to create a perfect shoot day.
See more of Julia at juliavandenoever.com!