Product Photography: Sword and Stone

Last year we were sent on a photography mission by Tim, the founder of Sword and Stone. Tim’s aim with the brand is creating exciting and edgy (pun intended) high-quality products for budding home chefs! We were lucky enough to photograph his latest product, codenamed “The Spitfire”. We wanted to create a range of environments to show the knife in all its glory.

The Spitfire Chef’s knife in all its glory.

Creating the scenes

Autumnal Veg

We decided to make the autumnal scene fairly rustic looking, so we popped down to the Goods Shed in Canterbury to hunt for some truly earthy looking and photograph worthy veg. We picked out some lovely looking squashes, radishes, shallots and pears, which all had lovely colours and textures, perfect for the scene.

The Beach bar

Moving away from the moody scene we wanted something more fresh and summery; an image which invoked the feeling of a beach bar or warm summer afternoon spent in your garden with cocktails and fresh salad.

The Christmas dinner

Tim also wanted some shots of the knife in action. This one was based around Christmas dinner preparation. We went for a moody atmosphere with a main focus on the knife.

The New Year’s party

As the knife is also a show-off piece we felt a dinner party setting was perfect to help illustrate this. Orange and an old-fashioned cocktail felt like the perfect props for this winter evening party scene.

The launch of the knife!

We wish Tim all the best with Sword and Stone in 2021!

The new knife has now officially launched!

be found featuring the images over on the Sword and Stone website: https://shopify.swordandstone.co.uk/products/spitfire-chefs-knife

Many thanks for checking out this blog!

We are Block Art Media! A Kent based photography and video production house with a passion for image making. We help brands, artists and businesses on their journey by taking their content to the next level.

Behind The Shots: Fella and the All Star Challenge 2020

We couldn’t believe a year had passed already. We packed up all our gear into the car and began our evening drive over to Folkestone. 

It was our shoot day for the All Star competition; an annual hairstyling and portraiture competition hosted by men’s hair and skin care brand American Crew. The founder of American Crew, David Raccuglia, is not just a talented barber, he is also a highly skilled, self-taught photographer with a love for classic black and white images; reminiscent of classic 1940-60 Hollywood portraiture. From this combination of photography and mens hair styling skills, American Crew was born and a competition celebrating both of these passions was created. 

Last year we came very close to reaching the finals, with our photographs of model Soren Paillou and our good friends at Fella Hair were eager to enter again. This time they had organised two models each with distinctive looks, styled by barbers Alex Wakefield and Jayson Black.

Last years images which made it to the top 20.

The Models and the looks

This year, both barbers had come up with a back story and personality for their look. Jayson styled model George Blake into a Harley Davidson-riding rocker with a glorious beard and a love for rock bars and neat bourbon. Alex had gone for a Mod culture inspired look, a sharp looking young man with a chip on his shoulder portrayed by fashion model Soren Palliou.

The Final images

Here they are! Our final front and side profile shots for the competition:

Soren rocking the Mod look with some amazing textured hair as styled by Alex

George with his glorious beard and hair styled by Jayson

Closing thoughts

Unfortunately our images didn’t make it to the finals this year, but they were spotted on the judging table in one of the videos American Crew streamed and we received some encouraging comments:

We were really happy with our shots and were blown away by the efforts made by the barbers and models. A huge thank you to Alex, Jayson, Bobby, George and Soren. We already can’t wait for next year!

Behind The Scenes

Our basic lighting setup for the shoot was a large octabox as the key light, a small softbox as the hair and rim light positioned behind and a lot of reflected and bounced light was played around with to get the look just right.

Our basic lighting setup

Editing

We were shooting tethered to keep an eye on the images as we went and everyone was pretty chuffed with the shots straight out the camera. After we got home we cracked on with some high end editing. Our workflow was firstly to get the image looking right in Lightroom by adjusting the tones, clarity, highlights and contrast to give them a bit of punch. Then we took them over to photoshop for our high-end final touches. The 3 stages of the images are shown below:

Credits and social media links

Models:

Soren Paillou

George Croft

Hair Stylists:

Alex Wakefield

Jayson Black

Fella Barbering:

Fella

Fella Folkestone

Fella Margate

American Crew UK:

IG Page

The Do Nothing Club: Promotional shoot

Late last year we were invited to take photos for Fella Hair’s brand new “Do Nothing Club,” a secret speakeasy style basement club; offering high end skin, face and hair treatments along with a selection of spirits, cocktails and beers.

“Cocktail with your haircut sir?” “YES PLEASE!”

Our mission was to present the services they offer but also to capture the club’s style and atmosphere.

We used a mix of constant lights LED panels with some coloured Gels to reinforce the look and feel of the club lights and threw in some flash light to pop the subjects.

The different lighting resulted in striking images with rich shadows, mixing high contrast film noir style lighting with neon colours to match the clubs cool aesthetic.  

The shoot felt like a movie set. The Fella staff were fantastic and helped to create different scenarios with us moving all the lights around and using different colours for each of the scenes.

If you or any gentlemen in your life are looking for a pampering, stag party hangout or just a haircut in quite easily the coolest barber shop in Kent then to the Do Nothing Club in Fella Folkestone is the spot you’re after!

We got a great range of shots showcasing the services, products and details of the club, and you can check them out here:

https://www.instagram.com/fellafolkestone/

https://www.instagram.com/myfolkestone/

Thanks again Fella for the amazing shoot!