BTS: Saint Jane

Hi all! We’re back with another fun behind-the-scenes post. We recently had the opportunity to work with a beautiful company called Saint Jane. Elle had discovered them after they posted that they were looking to hire someone to photograph their cbd-infused facial oil. After looking at their products online, we immediately fell in love with their brand. Their facial oil comes packaged in a matte black rectangular bottle that features a gold plaque with their logo and product info engraved into it.

Their products look expensive and elegant and we knew right away that we wanted to create something that would convey those qualities. Most of our work thus far has been very fun and vibrant and we loved the challenge of creating images that gave a more edgy, luxurious, and even romantic vibe to them. Inspired by their packaging, Elle and I loved the idea of getting to photograph the product in studio for that elevated look as well as outside for a more natural feel that derives from their clean, botanical ingredients.

For this shoot, we actually got to hire someone we met through one of our Overtime meet-ups. If you haven’t attended one before, check out this post to find out why you should. Some of the ingredients and florals were going to be a little trickier and time-consuming to find so we reached out to our friend Wury of Graceful Garland Co. to help us find them.

On top of that, we also had to hunt for some actual hemp plants to include in our photographs. Finding those leaves in itself was kind of a wild goose chase because there weren’t many dispensaries that just plainly sold hemp leaves. Luckily, a friend suggested checking out Elemental Wellness Center in San Jose and there we found what we needed.

We also got to visit one of our favorite fabric shops called, you guessed it, Fabrics R Us. Lol! We picked out this amazing black velvet fabric that was going to be part of a curtain scene as well as a really fun slippery leather fabric.

There were a few tricky moments of basic troubleshooting and things we learned from this shoot that we’ll definitely remember going forward. The most difficult part was making sure we were lighting the plaque correctly and it took a bit of maneuvering to figure out the best way to do this. It honestly came down to shooting a separate shot where we used a tiny little white card underneath the plaque so that it would reflect a smooth texture instead of whatever was actually in front of the bottle. This separate shot of the plaque illuminated correctly was to be later composited onto the final image.

One of the other issues we ran into was something we probably should have known but forgot to test out beforehand. While we still love some of the natural light shots, our original plan was to shoot the products and various props outside while the shadows were still tight, close to the objects, and not as elongated.

Since we didn’t really know what time that would be, we accidentally realized too late that we should have shot them earlier in the day. Therefore, we ended up racing against time before the light completely went away. So moral of the story, test out the best shadows for your natural light shots a few days before your actual shoot so you know what time to step out.

All in all, Elle and I had such a fun time shooting Saint Jane’s products. We may have gotten a little messy but what shoot doesn’t. We got to spread out all the ingredients on our painted black boards, tape florals on Elle’s wrist and arm for an oil drip scene, create some fun gifs, and go outside to play with shadows.

This shoot was probably my favorite shoot to date. Everything felt so seamless and the images we took have been the most cohesive set of images we’ve ever created— something we’ve been trying to work on for the past few months. Check out some bts images from this shoot below and a couple of the final assets we delivered. Keep an eye out for when the rest of our work for Saint Jane goes live on the site.

Is it the weekend yet?

Arabela