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Recently, Nashville-based food photographer Kyle Dreier produced some yummy images for Planet Smoothie, a campaign in which he was behind the majority of the creative direction. I caught up with Kyle and tapped into the creative process behind the project. Enjoy!
Talk a bit about the project. How does it fit into your photographic style?
There wasn’t an agency involved so we started with no creative. It took us sitting around a conference room table and proposing directions on the fly. This concept was something I had been thinking about for them prior to our meeting. After doing a few thumbnails there on the spot we all agreed to pursue the direction. I really gravitate to a graphic design approach to photography, and taking into account my love of typography, it sort of just played to all my passions.
Were there any challenges involved with this project?
The challenge with this project, as with any project, was trying to accurately convey a specific product…getting the smoothie itself to look like what they serve at their retail locations. Our stylist on this project did a great job keeping things as true as possible to what the customer gets. Needless to say, it took some trial and error but we got there.
What was involved in planning/preproduction?
Planning for this project was like many others—talking creative (or in this case actually creating creative), some coordination and getting really clear on expectations all the way around. This is a client we’ve worked with so it wasn’t like training a newbie client, everything went smoothly. (I almost wrote smoothie…that’d been a bad pun.)
Where did the shoot take place?
We shot this at my studio in Nashville. As far as processing goes, I’m kind of a stickler for getting it in camera, so there wasn’t a whole lot to do after the shoot. We have a basic processing and retouching workflow. This one didn’t require much else. The fun part is at first people think the shapes were done in post with clipping etc, but the shapes were done on set by cutting the fruit to fit each of the shapes.
What has the reaction to the images been so far?
The client has been very happy. I’m happy, too. I’d like to get a call where the client says “Hey Kyle, sales are up 17% because of your photography!” Ha! I’m still waiting for that call.
Did you learn anything through this project?
I learned I really like making shapes with food. More specifically, I like the letterform. I can’t imagine doing this with a serif font…but maybe that’ll be my next challenge. I would enjoy that.