This was a brochure photoshoot with some unique challenges! In 2019, we were commissioned to shoot the new cold-temp clothing range from Norwich-based manufacturers, Flexitog. But the location was no ordinary set…
Having worked on commercial photoshoots for two decades, you’d think we’d come across pretty much every challenge out there. So did we, until cold-temperature clothing manufacturers, Flexitog, asked us to photograph their new range for their latest brochure in one of Europe’s largest freezers!
Winter is coming…
As you can imagine, preparing for a commercial shoot is fairly routine for us. A quick check that the right camera bodies and lenses are packed… making sure everything is charged and we have enough memory cards. All pretty standard.
Preparing to shoot in -18c is a different kettle of fish. As well as making sure our photographer doesn’t freeze to death (kindly taken care of by the guys at Flexitog with their extreme cold-temperature clothing and footwear) we had to make sure that the equipment would survive.
One of the biggest problems that presents itself shooting inside something like a cold storage unit, is the rapid change of temperatures when entering and exiting the cold store. To tackle this, we used a cool box to store the camera. This way, the camera equipment could be kept at a low temperature when leaving the cold store, and gradually come back up to normal temperature. This avoids the instant ‘frosting’ that develops on anything that goes from -18 to +20 too quickly.
The shoot…
Flexitog had arranged to shoot their clothing range at one of their existing customers’ sites- Reed Boardall in North Yorkshire. The new range included clothing for freezer temperatures and also chilled, so we needed to have two camera setups with us (one to use in the chilled areas while the other camera slowly came back to room temperature).
The talent for the shoot was staff from Reed Boardall, who had volunteered to become models for the day! This meant that we could shoot the clothing in real-world situations, such as being worn while picking and driving fork lifts.
The results…
The result from the one day shoot was a library of over 1000 images that Flexitog could use to illustrate their 2019 brochure with as well as other marketing collateral.
Here’s a couple of previews from the printed brochure…
