So did you know we have Matcha farms in Australia?… Neither did I until a few weeks ago when I was commissioned by the lovely team at Happy Mumma Matcha. Projects like these make my job so exciting, I am an inquisitive person and I love learning about new industries and products and understand how they work, I fell understanding the subject weather that be a still life product or business/process like this is the first stage of my photography process so I can help tell the story.
Late 2024 Matcha became nothing under the level of VIRAL in Australia, blowing up on social media and hitting cafes everywhere, strawberry matcha, matcha lattes, iced matcha and matcha smoothies. Being one of Sydneys leading drink photographers I too was involved in the viral moment as well, photographing many a refreshing cup of the green beverage for menus, social media and advertising. After extensively exploring the finished product through 2004 and 2005 I was very excited to be given the opportunity to further learn and understand the starting process of the beverage.
In Australia we have a few Matcha plantations with Mamma Matcha’s one being one of only a couple that are privately run and owned farms. I was approached by the team as they were looking at launching their brand further and were ready for some elevated content to their existing. The idea was to look at their unique stand point of being one of the only locally grown crops that is majority harvested and processed in Australia, que the photography to capture this and tell the story of the process. At the plantation the new leaf is cut and then transported to a processing room where the fresh leaves run through a number of sorting, cutting, drying and separating machines to produce the product. I was also told the product is sent back to Japan for the final secret finish process as per all traditional matcha, WOW!
The shoot fell into a lifestyle execution, keeping content real and natural, nothing over polished and fake, capturing in a documentary style through the day. Due to the process speed we captured everything hand held using the available light and environment, nothing was stage rather captured through the authentic process looking for key moments and steps to tell the story.
We visited the plantation in the morning capturing the process from harvest to processing through a combination of short form video and still imagery to allow the team variation in marketing, web and social use. Understanding the possible output/media needs allows me to capture content in the best formats to the clients purpose.