PHOTOGRAPHY
& VIDEO.

On a marketplace listing, a delivery app or an Instagram grid, the photograph stands in for the product until the parcel arrives. People decide from a picture whether a pickle looks homemade or a serum looks clean, and a good shoot answers those questions before anyone asks them.

We shoot and edit in-house: our photographer, video editors and designers plan, make and finish the work together, so each picture is made for the place it will be used.

What we make

Most shoots produce more than one of these. A product shoot for a skincare label, for example, usually needs the white-background images for the marketplace, textures and swatches for social, a few in-use pictures for the website, and three or four short vertical videos, all from the same day.

How a shoot runs

Shoots follow the same Listen, Plot, Create and Blow up stages as everything else we make.

1. Listen. Where will the pictures be used, who are they for, and what should they make someone do? A listing image and a reel for the same product have different jobs.
2. Plot. A shot list, with every image and clip planned against the place it will appear and the shape that place needs. References, props, models, location, styling and permissions are sorted before the day, because a shoot day is too expensive to spend deciding things.
3. Create. The shoot, then the edit: retouching, colour matched across the whole set, video cut, captioned and sized.
4. Blow up. Delivery in every size and format each channel needs, named so your team can find them, and used straight away in the social calendar, the ads and the website when we run those too.

Shoot for where it will be seen

Every platform crops and compresses differently, so the shape of each picture is decided before the shoot.

Reels and Shorts are vertical, 9:16, and a frame composed for a horizontal screen loses its subject when it is cropped down. Instagram says reels over three minutes won't be recommended to new audiences, and YouTube Shorts have been able to run up to three minutes since October 2024. When a plan needs vertical and horizontal versions of the same scene, we shoot them separately, so neither is a crop of the other.

Marketplaces have their own rules, and Amazon is strict about them. Amazon's staff guidance for main product images asks for a pure white background (RGB 255, 255, 255), the product filling at least 85% of the frame, and at least 1,000 pixels on the longest side so shoppers can zoom. We shoot and edit to those specifications from the start.

Food and skincare

Food has a short life under lights. Steam fades, garnish wilts, gravy forms a skin, and the dish that looked perfect at 11am looks tired by 11.20. So food shoots are planned shot by shot, with the dish made or plated as close to the camera as possible and styled the way it is really served, because a picture that oversells the plate turns into an unhappy review.

Skincare asks for honesty of a different kind. Textures, swatches and skin have to look real across different skin tones, and retouching should never change what the product appears to do. Packaging with reflective caps, frosted glass and tiny print adds its own technical work, which is most of what separates a product photo that sells from one that looks like a phone snap.

Video, from a reel to a brand film

Our video editors cut everything we shoot, and most videos get cut more than once. A brand film usually needs a full version for the website and YouTube, a sixty-second version, fifteen and six-second versions for ads, and vertical edits for Reels and Shorts. Planning those at the shot-list stage means the shoot captures what each one needs: wide shots that set the scene for the film, tight details for the six-second cut, and vertical framing for the reels.

Plenty of people scroll with the sound off, so a social video has to make sense without it: the product or the person on screen in the first second, text on screen where it helps, and captions burned in. When the sound is on it should be worth hearing, which means licensed music or original sound, a clean voice-over and a mix that leaves room for the words. For ads we usually cut several openings for the same video, because the first second decides whether anyone sees the rest, and the numbers tell us quickly which opening works.

Shoots around launches and festivals

Most brands need their biggest shoots at the same few moments: a launch, a new menu, a festive range, a sale. Diwali falls on 8 November in 2026, and festive content shot a month or more ahead gets calmer shoot days and time for a proper edit. Our festival marketing guide has the calendar through 2027 and the case for choosing fewer festivals and doing them properly.

One well-planned shoot day can supply weeks of social content as well as the season's ads, but only when the content calendar, the ad plan and the shot list are written together, which is easier when the same team writes them.

Who owns the pictures

Under section 17 of the Copyright Act, a photograph or a film made for payment at someone's request belongs first to the person who commissioned it, unless there is an agreement saying otherwise. So when you pay for a shoot, the photos and films are yours by default.

Two things sit outside that. Music in a film keeps its own rights: since the 2012 amendment, the composers and lyricists of music used in a film keep their copyright in it, so a track has to be licensed for the uses you plan, including ads. And people who appear in the pictures, whether models, staff or customers, should sign a release that covers how the images will be used. We sort out both before the shoot.

Made in-house, start to finish

Our photographer, video editors and designers are on the same team as the strategists who write the social calendar and the people who run the ads. You can see all of them on our team page. That means the person editing the reel knows what the caption will say, the designer knows which photo will carry the campaign, and when an ad shows that one shot is outperforming the rest, the next shoot gets more of it.

It also means the brand looks like one brand. Colour, light and framing stay consistent from the marketplace listing to the Instagram grid to the hoarding, which is hard to manage when every channel hires its own photographer.

What it costs

We quote against the brief, because a shoot can mean twenty white-background product images in a day or a brand film with a crew, actors and a location. The quote covers the planning, the shoot and the edit. Outside costs such as models, locations, props and food are listed separately so you can see them, and GST at 18% applies to agency fees.

If you are planning a launch, a festival campaign or a marketplace listing, send the brief with the products and the dates. Shoots booked a few weeks ahead cost less and go better.