Bringing to you my exciting work as a food photographer, beverage photographer and still life photographer my new website is now LIVE! Sorry to all my clients and industry friends for the delay but after 5… or maybe more years it up and ready for your viewing. Check out the teaser below  and full website https://bencole.com.au Enjoy!

 

As a freelance photographer your website can sometimes be given a backseat even though it’s our shopfront to our business and I made it high priority in 2019 to spend a bit of time giving my shopfront a well needed facelift. After weeks or maybe months of collecting work from the past few years, shortlisting, reviewing with friends and shortlisting again I am finally proud to be able to share my current body of work.

Sorry for the delay

As a freelance photographer shooting is only half the job and after post/pre production on projects, accounting, marketing, business management, sales, studio management and the hundred and one other things required in running a photography business the website maintenance and updating usually gets put to the bottom of the list, especially with the ability to share current work and projects on various forms of social media…. then all of a sudden you realise or get advised from clients and industry friends that “your website is looking very dated Ben”. I wish I could say the delay was a tactic to get more meet and greets and in-person meetings to showcase current work but unfortunate it is due to a lack of time which is something I am going to try and change moving forward, note to self, allow time for regular website and blog updates! On the home front I have had a few exciting things happening over the past few years which has additionally added to putting the website down the priority list. With my wife we renovated our new home and added our baby girl Ruby who recently turned 2 into our family.

So what have I been up to…

On checking It was 2013 since my last full website update… so yes to everyone my old website was looking very dated lol. I thought this blog post was a good opportunity to reflect back and keep you updated on what’s been going on.

Wind back to 2013 … I was an agency represented photographer but there were some big changes starting to happen in the industry, after long thought and review in 2014 I changed my business model and went back to representing myself. I had a positive time being represented and it was a direction I always wanted but in the changing Sydney market I decided it was a better business model at the time. Through this period I was still shooting a lot of food packaging and beverage projects and was primarily shooting on my Sinar digital system.

Going back to self-managing Ben Cole Photography made me more hands on and 2014 to 2015 I spent a lot of time at meet and greets, portfolio showings and chasing down leads, It was a busy period and I started to work on a variety of projects outside of packaging with more advertising and digital execution. Some of the notable projects which ran through the year were numerous food photography produce promotion style shoots for Woolworths which were used in various social and digital outputs. I also worked with Vibe Creative from the IMS group on more food photography to update all of the Sara Lee packaging which some of the images are still in circulation to date and a beverage photoshoot for the hero key visual used in OOH adverting’s for the launch of Powerade ION4. For me this is the time we started seeing more shoots being booked for direct social media purpose where in the past they had been extra shot requests if time allowed at the end of other bookings.

With a change in how I was working 2016 was the year I stopped using my Sinar system completley. I had been using the system since I started and had upgraded 2 digital backs in this period, I loved the Sinar but my shoots started to include more location work paired with increasing shot lists and  a changing trending image look which all pushed me to start solely shooting on my Canon system. My workflow had been heading that way in the previous year and is something I saw as a positive moving forward. I purchased the much anticipated Canon 5ds which was marketed to be Canons answer to  medium format, although the camera has not been loved by all shooting styles like the previous 5d iii  it was perfect for my use and I still currently run with a Canon 5ds and Canon 5D iv. 2016 brought on a few different style clients with an increase of small boutique business requiring high end photography, these style clients allowed me to be more involved with most needing a bit of creative direction, production and overall management offering extensions to the clients business which can make for a rewarding experience. My advertising and digital projects continued to growing and although I still worked on packaging projects these had changed and were definitely not my core business. Advertising digital boards offering motion were becoming more frequently used and were things to considered in shoots, This year also saw a new look in the Coca-Cola asset project requiring an update to the full image asset suite. The Coca-Cola product photography is a client and project I have been working on for over 14 years to date, something I am very proud of. During this year I also worked on my first cook book, The Potato Cookbook, shooting a cookbook is something that has always been on my bucket list.

2017 was a big year, on a personal note my wife and I were underway with a renovation that slowly turned into a full rebuild of our family home and we also welcomed our baby girl Ruby into our family, we finished and moved in a week before Ruby was born, hectic is the best way to describe everything!

Influencers, Influencers, influencers! Were in full swing and a regular topic and conversation in industry circles and shoots. The needs for social media style content was on the up as most brands discovered the need and positives of a social media presence. This paved the way for a collaboration of myself and a few freelances creating a small breakaway business Colab Productions looking to fill this need. It was a little short lived due to all of our commitments to our current businesses but we did a few successful projects together and learnings have allowed me to offer better production services building freelance teams on specific projects which is something that has been successful to date and increase my offerings to current and new clients. I worked on some exciting projects through the year  with a lot offering production services organising video, recipe development, talent scouting/booking and location scouting services. Some notable ones were content for the launch of EZ Smiles offering all video, talent and still images for the product launch,  social content library for Australian Bananas covering video, stills, recipe development and styling along with a few large e-commerce projects for clothing labels and products library’s. A final memorable project was for start up business Roselands which on set I received a call form my pregnant wife advising she was going to the hospital. I wont go into detail but I head straight to the hospital after the shoot and Ruby was born the following morning… the life of a freelancer!

2018 was my biggest year yet, I worked on numerous advertising campaigns with some notably big projects for Heinze, Coca-Cola, Quantas, Arrnotts, Jack Daniels and Brickworks to name a few, most of these are on previous blog posts so check them out! I had a few interstate projects, continued working with my local boutique brands, and even some projects for kick starter products. Amongst all of that I found a little time to get a couple of holidays in with the family which is very rare for a freelancer! CGI seemed to be full steam ahead through 2018 and I noticed it being heavily used across a lot of advertising campaigns and in truth the results are amazing however there is still a very valid space for photography. From an execution point I worked on a few projects through the year shooting textures and surfaces for the shapers to use in CGI purpose, so it’s still a combination for best results but wow the artists are getting good!

Late 2018 is also the time I started to get advised it’s time to update the website! Which is where I am going to wrap this up 🙂

Thanks for taking the time reading my longer than normal post and please keep in touch, I will continue to (try) and regularly update and keep you posted on my projects, test shoots and anything else interesting I want to share!

 

And again please check out the website if you get a chance