Urban Sprout

Like most shoots this one begins with a story. About two years ago my family and I went to the farmers market in downtown Murfreesboro, TN. I decided to take my DJI Osmo along with me this particular Saturday. I thought I could get some cool video footage to put together for my instagram story my intention was to do a story around purchasing a tomahawk ribeye from one of my friends who owns a local farm and then tossing it on the smoker. While at the farmers market we ran into one of the newer vendors and struck up a conversation. This vendor happened to be selling micro greens. For those not in the know micro greens are essentially baby greens they have very intense flavors that are really amazing. One thing led to another and a few months later we were in the studio shooting.

The Request

One of my most common requests is to photograph content that bridges the gap between food photography and product photography. In this case, a local Micro Green grower reached out to me to create a catalog of images that they could use on social media and on their website. The company needed to show off their products both as a living and growing plant in a lifestyle setting and also more traditional photos of each individual micro green packaged for sale. Both types of imagery are vital to this client.

The Work

For this particular client, I have broken your work down into three sections. Simple packaged product imagery in a lifestyle environment, images of the greens in a lifestyle environment and finally true lifestyle images. For this client, we decided to use natural light coming through the studios south-facing windows. The south light would give us consistent light throughout the day. We opted for natural light because the client wanted to give a stronger sense of nature in the photos.

Packaged Shots

For the packaged shots the client received a gallery of images of each micro green on a solid white backdrop, own a white planked surface and also Ono a white planted surface with some minimal props.

Give Me More Greens!

The next part of this shoot was to capture each of these micro greens in a bit more organic of a setting. Take a look!

Lifestyle Hero Shots

For this next batch of images we wanted to get to know the micro greens a bit better. These shots are closer in showing more detail and texture and shot from table height for the most part.

Wrapping It Up

Working with the micro greens was a really fun project. I got to try several varieties that I had never had before and even took home a tray of the popcorn greens and the reddish greens. We were able to spend a full day in the studio and build a great content library for the client to use..

Nick Bumgardner is a food and product photographer based out of Nashville, TN.