New Client Welcome: DōMatcha
I begin this blog post with some little known facts about tea:
• Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world (curious what #1 is? No, it’s not beer…nor wine…#1 is water).
• All teas come from the same plant called camellia sinensis (this is super interesting to me, since the delicious, healthy and flavorful teas I love to drink come from the same plant that makes my Grandmother’s tastes-and-looks-like-dirty-dishwater tea… I love you Grandma, really, but that tea is so horrid)
• According to Chinese legend, the ancient Chinese emperor and inventor of Chinese medicine, Shennong, was the first to discover the pleasant flavor and medicinal properties of green tea. One day, as he was boiling water over a fire, a breeze swept a few leaves of a nearby tea bush into his kettle.
*Tea facts above courtesy of DōMatcha
Right before the holidays I got a call from Calli, marketing extraordinaire at DōMatcha, a tea company providing the matcha style of green tea rich in tradition for their customers. By partnering with Shohokuen, one of the oldest and most established matcha suppliers in Japan they are able to bring DōMatcha directly from Kyoto, the magical place where matcha originated. Calli needed some product photos of DōMatcha’s packaging, and amidst our city’s unusual large amount of snow we were still able to get together one afternoon, make some matcha, and photograph the product. It was relaxing, just as a tea shoot should be.
The goal: the product must be center focus, the logo be prominent (I love the logo! Designed by their graphic designer in Japan), and only simple props that have a traditional, natural feel would be included.
The lighting here was a large softbox pointing down on the product from above left, a large window to the right and a reflector bouncing light back onto the front of the product. The above shot needed room on both the right and the left sides for possible text and logo, and the flexibility for cropping by the client depending on the media and layout. What you don’t see is my fabulous assistant Naz holding up the back of the tatami mat as it wouldn’t stay clipped to the backdrop crossbar.
This is a fairly standard product line-up shot, besides a bit of fiddling with the baby blue whisk stand and the two bowls, we were able to get this full line up shot that the client was elated with.
Fabulous to work with you Calli, I look forward to the next opprtunity, and thank you for all the tea!
Tags: Do Matcha, green tea, jackie connelly photography, matcha tea, new client welcome, product photography
January 30th, 2009 at 9:21 am
These photos make me want to have a cup of green tea right now.
Was there a lot of retouching involved to get these images where you wanted them?
January 31st, 2009 at 1:31 am
Hi Ian!
It was fun, Calli gave us a little demo on how to properly make a bowl of matcha, and informed me that the Starbucks matcha I fell in love with when we were in China is 80% sugar. Lovely. DoMatcha’s is much healthier and more authentic; no more Starbucks for me.
To answer your question, yes a bit: a slight bit of colour correction, and the vibrancy gauge in Lightroom is my favourite (not quite as drastic as saturation, but adds nice pop to the colours) and usually sharpening as the last step. The single round tin shot on the bamboo trivet got a bit more attention; the trivet itself had some imperfections and dark spots that got cloned out.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
[...] friends at DoMatcha must really like casinos. Or maybe it’s the Cirque shows? Or maybe [...]