When HerbaVeda approached me for product photography, the brief was straightforward: photograph their skincare products cleanly on a white background for use on their website and marketing materials.
That’s a perfectly valid approach.
But as a commercial photographer in Phoenix, I also know that there’s a difference between giving a client exactly what they asked for and identifying an opportunity to give them something they didn’t realize they needed.
So I asked for permission to take the project in a more conceptual direction.
They said yes.
And that turned a straightforward product photography shoot into an entire visual environment, complete with water, natural elements, atmospheric mist and slow-motion video.
The Brief: Clean Product Photography
HerbaVeda needed clean product images that could serve a very practical purpose.
The products needed to be photographed on white so they could easily be:
- Placed on their website
- Used in marketing materials
- Dropped into graphic layouts
- Used with different backgrounds
- Repurposed across digital channels
Those images were important.
And we still created them.
But I didn’t think that should be all we created.
There’s a tendency in commercial photography to think about the brief as the finish line.
I think of it more as the starting point.
The question I asked was:
What else could we create while we already have the products, talent, lighting and production environment in place?
The Creative Direction
HerbaVeda is a skincare brand focused on health and hydration.
So rather than simply putting the products on a surface and lighting them beautifully, I wanted to create an environment that visually communicated moisture, nature and freshness.
The concept was essentially:
What if the products existed inside a miniature natural oasis?
We built the environment right here at The Hive Studios in Phoenix, using a clear lucite tray as the foundation.
We added:
- River rocks
- Moss
- Water
- The HerbaVeda products
The result was essentially a miniature terrarium that gave us an entirely new visual language for the products.
This is one of the advantages of working in a controlled commercial photography studio environment. We weren’t dependent on finding the perfect location. We could build the environment we wanted, control the lighting and make adjustments in real time.
And then we added one more element.
Adding Movement
As I was working through the still photography, I started watching the smoke move across the surface of the water.
It was subtle.
But it completely changed the scene.
The still images were capturing the atmosphere, but the movement of the mist created something else entirely.
It made the environment feel alive.
That’s when the project started to evolve from simply product photography into something much more useful for a modern brand.
I wanted to capture the movement itself.
From Photography to Video
For the still photography, I was working with my Canon R5.
Once we decided to introduce motion, I switched to my Sony FX3 cinema camera and began shooting at 120 frames per second in S&Q mode.
We added another layer of smoke to the scene and then gently introduced controlled airflow.
As the air moved through the scene, the fog separated and began billowing away from the product.
At normal speed, it was subtle.
At 120 frames per second, it became a completely different visual experience.
The result was a dramatic slow-motion product reveal that could be used as social content and other digital marketing assets.
One production. Multiple content applications.
The Result
The original brief called for clean product photography.
We delivered that.
But we also created an entirely different set of visual assets that gave HerbaVeda something they could use to make their brand stand out.
The final production included:
Clean Product Photography
Practical imagery for their website, ecommerce and marketing applications.
Conceptual Brand Photography
Environmental product imagery designed to communicate the feeling behind the brand.
Motion Content
Slow-motion video designed for social media and digital marketing.
Instead of creating a handful of product photos, we created an entire visual world around the products.
And that’s the part of the project I’m most proud of.
The HerbaVeda Product Campaign was also recognized with a Silver Award in Still Photography at the 2026 ADDY Awards. The award recognized the creative execution of the campaign, which was photographed by James Patrick Photography.
Beyond the Brief
The easiest thing I could have done would have been to photograph the products on white, deliver the files and move on to the next project.
And there are certainly projects where that’s exactly the right solution.
But good commercial photography isn’t always about doing more.
It’s about seeing opportunities.
The client knew they needed product photography.
My job as the photographer was to understand why they needed it, what they were trying to communicate and whether there was an opportunity to create something that would help them accomplish even more.
In this case, there was.
We took a straightforward product photography assignment and turned it into a conceptual brand campaign.
The client was ecstatic with the results.
And honestly, so was I.
Because this is what I love about commercial photography.
You start with a brief.
Then you figure out what’s possible.
Commercial Photography in Phoenix
As a Phoenix commercial photographer, I work with brands that need more than simply a collection of attractive images.
Sometimes the right answer is clean product photography.
Sometimes it’s environmental brand photography.
Sometimes it’s video.
And sometimes it’s all three.
The goal isn’t to make every project more complicated.
The goal is to understand the brand well enough to know when the obvious solution is actually the right solution—and when there’s an opportunity to create something better.
That’s what we were able to do with HerbaVeda.
And that’s what I mean when I talk about developing beyond the image.
