Shea Evans captured all the fillings of the yearly Thanksgiving feast

From mashed potatoes to pecan pie, Reno, Nevada-based photographer Shea Evans captured all the fillings of the yearly Thanksgiving feast for regional grocery chain Raley’s. Working hand in hand with a team of food stylists, assistants, an art director, and a producer, Shea set the scene for the photographic festivities in a windowless studio, using strobes to accentuate the details of each dish. After four days of fun creative collaboration, Shea delivered the images for Raley’s printed Thanksgiving catalog, as well as other promotional social media collateral.

With the big holiday coming up tomorrow, Shea shares some of his favorite shots:

Can you tell me more about the client and how you got involved?

All of these images were shot for Raley’s, a regional grocer operating in Northern California and Northern Nevada.  They found me through a Google search, thanks to my SEO integrated into my aPhotofolio website. This was my first big project with them and I’ve been working with them steadily ever since. I just shot their new Thanksgiving campaign for this year, which goes in a completely different direction from these images, but I can’t show those just yet.

I’d say this shoot is typical of shoots these days in that the name of the game is content strategy.  So, we’re often shooting the same scene/subject for multiple crops to fit all the platforms (web, social, various ad formats), and sometimes adding in gifs.  There’s always an initial shot build and then just several arrangements where it’s all hands on deck to make the shots work within the various formats and still have time to move on for more shots. It’s a lot of work but the team keeps it really fun. 

Since this shoot, I’ve shot another 30-40 days with this client in the last year and absolutely LOVE working with them.  It has been really fun to work with them not only on Holiday content, but also packaging, small short-run promos, and even a floral shoot on location which was a fun switch-up from the normal food in studio work.

See more of Shea’s images on his website!

Food Stylists:
Overhead whole turkeys: Christine Wolheim
Overhead plated meals and pie cuts: Randy Mon
Ham: Erin Quon

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