Tuesday 16 July 2013

Ginster's Cornish pasties, pies, slices, subs....

Original Cornish pasty
Last autumn I started shooting Smith & Milton's big re-design of Ginster's range of pasties, pies, slices and subs under the excellent art direction of Ruth Pearson.   It was a very tight brief with specific requirements for the backgrounds which I sourced myself.   Amongst them we used slate, granite, artfully screwed-up and painted brown paper and a favourite, treasured old baking sheet of mine.   Then we spent weeks looking for exactly the right piece of wood for the Slices before discovering it hiding on the back of an old oak panel in the corner of the studio!

The lighting brief was also very tight.   We were to shoot to avoid retouching being required and with a strong vignette specific to each product range.   We managed it with a very carefully constructed (and well-documented!) lighting set-up, although in the final design this aspect has been dropped (which, ironically resulted in the need for quite a bit of retouching.   But that's how it goes....)   Product to look "natural" with crumbs but not "too many" - which turned out to be "very few" and learned all sorts of techniques for avoiding and erasing grease marks on different surfaces!  

It has taken some months to be released but I am now very proud to see the work in the shops and on their vans. 
4 Steak slices

Thanks to Maud Eden for some great styling, to Esther and Anna for their excellent diagrams, patience and good humour and not least to Friedel Schroder and his team who helped find homes for hundreds and hundreds of spare pasties!
Chicken Tikka sub

Large sausage roll
Chilli chicken wrap
For the full range of images go to www.ginsters.co.uk