One of the essential things for a developing brand is visual identity. The colors, typefaces, photography etc. has to be consistent throughout the product, website or any other design work. Since Antandre is a developing brand, it was very important for us to make these decisions. Our website barely had any photos other than product shots. We believed in telling our story through photography. So we decided to do a lifestyle shoot that will encompass our products and show them in context. The photographer was already hired for this shoot before I got there. Monil’s sister, Megan Kothari, who has her own startup called Aaryah had used Rachel Thalia Fisher as the photographer for some of her lifestyle shoots. Monil was impressed with her work, and due to his sister’s recommendation, we went with Rachel. On the other hand, we were looking for models who would fit into our demographic and would easily relate to the model. After weeks of search, we settled with Yesenia Linares.

Simultaneously, while we were searching for models and a studio, we started working on the shot list.

We spent a lot of time on preproduction, so that on the day of, we don’t have to run around for things we didn’t expect. The date of the shoot was January 24th, 2016. However, due to the massive snow storm, it was postponed to February 3rd. Monil sent our a call sheet with the roles an responsibility for the shoot. 

We had the studio from 11:30am to 5:00pm. The make-up artist and the model were supposed to arrive there earlier so they could start on the make-up.

I got there around noon while they were working on the make-up. My main purpose for being there was 1) to take behind the scenes shots which we could use for social media and the website 2) to see how a photoshoot works. This was my first time in a professional studio environment with a model. We roughly started the shoot around 12:30pm. The casual music helped ease the environment.

Rachel was directing Yesenia with poses while we were just hanging around giving them their space.

Within a couple of hours, Yesenia changed 3-4 outfits. Monil was helping Megan with the mix and match of the earrings and bracelets combinations. I unfortunately had to leave around 2 since I had a class at 2:30. I greeted everyone, shook hands and left for class.

Later during the week, I made a 15 second video for Instagram with the behind the scenes footage I took. Here’s the video: https://youtu.be/CTsQm4N2oKo

We had to wait almost a month till Rachel got back to us with the edited photos. Here are some of them: