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Vancouver, Canada-based photographer Seth Stevenson combines earthy elements with muted tones to give retail company Hudson’s Bay a clean and natural beauty product shoot. Seth’s background in product and lifestyle photography has afforded him a long-standing relationship with Hudson’s Bay, and this creative endeavor aligned well with his expertise in still life imagery.
With my focus primarily on still life, product, and lifestyle photography, this project was right up my alley.
Hudson’s Bay is a Canadian luxury department store and has become a regular client of Seth’s. This particular project was to showcase beauty brands through their website, emails, and social accounts. All the products featured are environmentally friendly, refillable, or BIPOC owned including popular brands like Aesop, 111Skin, Skindew, and Sunday Riley.
With the help of his creative stylist Ryan Louis, Seth integrated various elements from the outdoors to produce an organic feel. The shoot took place at Seth’s studio and with their creativity at play, the team enjoyed staging the products — with different sizes, colors, and arrangements — to make them pop amongst the props.
My creative partner and I ran with the art director’s brief and had a blast sourcing materials and props from local parks and nearby nurseries.
While the creativity and imagination required for the shoot were fun to utilize, the planning of it was also quite challenging. Balancing various colored products with specific backgrounds — some of which the client requested for certain items — along with the tones of the props and organic materials proved to be time-consuming. Many variations were sent to the client ahead of time to ensure there was cohesiveness among all the elements used.
Planning and preparation were key for Seth’s success. Seth and Ryan did a test run of the shots the previous day to see the arrangements they liked best. On the day of the shoot, they were able to drop everything into place, make some minor adjustments, and produce the shots with efficiency.
It felt no different than some of the still life work I’ve created for my personal projects, except this time with some great products.
The selects and approvals process with the client went smoothly after Seth provided them with numerous options ahead of time. This allowed Hudson’s Bay to either run with compositions as-is or provide further insight into their desired vision based on available props. During post-production, retouching and minor compositing of plates was necessary because some of the reflective products caught the studio lights.
Much like the process of balancing each prop, color, and product, Seth worked in harmony with the creative team to bring all elements of the project together. His years of experience in still photography crafts images that are unblemished and crisp while still feeling natural and organic, aiding clients like Hudson’s Bay in producing content that speaks to their eco-friendly mission.
The collaboration process on this project with the art director and my creative partner/stylist was a lot of fun. We really worked very well together to solidify all of the vignettes and groupings.
Photographer: Seth Stevenson
Client: Hudson’s Bay
Art Director: Grace Boivin
Stylist: Ryan Louis