Shoe Trader editor, Imogen Bailey, speaks to fashion, footwear and lifestyle photographer, Catie Allen, about the behind-the-scenes of a footwear photoshoot.
Describe the beginning, middle and end of shooting a footwear campaign.
[First] you get approached by a client, they give you a brief about what they're after and the rough time schedules that they're looking at shooting.
From there, even though they've got quite a strong idea of what they want, it is still part of a collaboration, because I look at what they've proposed and basically whether or not we're able to achieve that and if not, how we can tweak it.
So from there, we start looking at locations of where we're going to shoot. Then we go and do a recce – where you just go and have a look at the locations, you generally have quite a few location options – so we go and have a look at them, see if they're what we're after – the vibe – and what lighting we'll need to fit the tone.
Wittner's spring/summer 18 campaign Allen shot with Tash Sefton.
Then from there, [the client] will liaise with the stylist, hair and make-up artist and the film crew and I'll liaise with my team about what lights I want and then it's shoot day, which is always fun and full of energy.
After that, I give them back the select sheet – they get to go through and choose what images they want – that goes through post-production and then we launch, we're in stores.
How many pictures do you take in total?
[I think it's] hundreds because [the client has] a selection of probably around about 150-200 that they cull down.
But it's quite a rough select-sheet.
Obviously we're shooting footwear so you might have really beautiful images of the clothes, but the footwear doesn't look right.