Posted at 14:37h in
Shoots 
I have the pleasure of working with a brand-new restaurant, even before it's open the doors for business. It goes without saying that there is a lot of time, effort, and money that goes into getting a business like this launched, but it's critical it is done right, and thankfully this owner understands that. It's always going to be way harder to just slap something together real quick for the sake of speeding up processes, and then coming back around and tackling things all over again once the dust settles. Aside from this being a super unprofessional approach, it's a killer on the business' branding momentum. Right out of the gates, the day a business opens up, people will associate things with that place. The food, the menus, the music playing, the signage, the customer service, and even the color of the paint on the walls. You start changing all that stuff up a couple months after opening for business, changing your own consistency and branding, I think that you'll loose a lot of consistency in your customers, especially your recognizability. Besides, you wanna blow the socks off of your customers from day one, give them a true reason to keep coming back. You don't cut corners to quickly open your doors only to tell your customers things will get better here soon, so hang tight. In meeting with Darrin, the owner of Amerawcan Bistro, I knew right away that he wanted to make his place truly unique. Aside from him already offering a rare style of food and a great menu, he wanted the entire customer experience to be something people talk about after they eat there. We sat down and mapped out a branding style and message we wanted to send, in a visual sense, to accomplish this goal. I LOVE working with businesses in creating a branding image. Whether I am helping them with more than just photography or not, it's important that I fully understand what the end product needs to look like, as it's critical for properly executed photography. Photography produced with the final branding goal in-mind is clutch. Understanding what styles and colors menus, logos, and websites use will influence how the photography is executed. When done right, the photos are dropped right into the marketing material seamlessly, and looks flat-out impressive. You look like you got your shit together, and the truth is, when it looks like that, you probably do. It speaks volumes from the rest of your business, "come eat here, we care, we are professionals, what can we do to make this a better place for you." Honestly, I was super excited about being a part of this project from the beginning, and not having to worry about transitioning the business out of an old marketing image. A clean slate.
First day here in Phoenix, spending most of the day relaxing by the pool and trying to stay cool in the 100+ temps. How do you people handle these extreme temps for extended periods of time?! Did you get lost in the desert and just give up trying to find a way out? Anywho, it's nice for like... a week, max, and after that I'm done. So it's the fourth of July. If you could pick a couple locations where you can count on a nice, dry evening for a fireworks show, I bet Arizona would probably be on that list. Well, just so happens I'm in Arizona, Phoenix of all places, and we had an amazing lightning storm roll through. I couldn't imagine a fireworks show took place tonight, cause it was raining hardcore (think that's why they call it a monsoon). Restricted to the hotel room, all I could do was watch and listen as nature put on it's own fourth show. I tossed a camera on a tripod and attempted to capture some bolts of lightning off the back porch. It was a small window of the sky to capture, but I did get a couple captures. Nothing special, just something fun.
