wine

Lifestyle & Portrait Photography for Fetzer Winemaker.

This year’s push to help create unique and beautiful content beyond the bottle shot is off to a great start with some recent work for Fetzer Winery.  They have their 50th anniversary this year and wanted to feature their winemaker John Kane as a central piece of their story.

In shooting this job we needed to create a set of portraits and a small library of lifestyle images that could help tell the story through the various outlets the company is using to advertise.  I couldn’t have been happier with the brief and set to work creating an aesthetic that would hold up in any arena.

It seemed necessary to create a much more contemporary feel to things - after all, Fetzer is a progressive winery with a strong forward leaning ethic in sustainability.  It’s so easy for wine to be predictable and stuffy - a more modern look makes this story more accessible to a broader audience.  The last thing I wanted was pretentious, stiff portrait of a man holding a glass of red wine in a vineyard.  That’s so done and does nothing, in my mind, to tell a story about a brand or the people that inhabit it.  Wine marketing is evolving, and it’s visuals are evolving with it.

I knew from previous work up at the facility in Hopland that we’d be shooting in the barrel rooms - a dark and foreboding place for photography that needs to capture movement and life for a “lifestyle” shoot - so I drafted up some ideas of lighting scenarios that I could create with a minimal footprint.  Normally for a lifestyle look, keeping the light super soft is key, but in this scenario I wanted to bring the textures of the space alive and opted for more direct, bare light, softened and mixed only when it interacted with the subject.  It was a tricky mix, but I’m very pleased with the result (and with the energetic hustle of my assistant, Tim, who helped keep everything moving and firing in this dynamic shoot).

Keep an eye out for this work as the conversation around this anniversary evolves this year :)

Quality Time

Sonoma Bottle had the opportunity to photograph Carlisle Winery's Zinfandel catalog a little while back.  We know that it means a lot to a brand to maintain consistency with their photography and seeing all these images together inspired this little detour through photoshop to produce a mandala of Zinfandel.  It's all about quality control over the life of a brand.  Quality / Time.

Our Charity Partner

Our wine bottle shot photography business has had wonderful reception with the wine makers of Sonoma (and soon, Napa).  We're exceptionally proud of the strong start we've had with the studio - but none of it would be possible without the partnerships and community that helped get it off the ground. 

One of the most important parts of my community (as the owner of Sonoma Bottle) is the outdoor adventure network of Sonoma County.  It's why we've partnered with a non-profit organization at the core of this group, the B-Rad foundation.  When you arrange an order for wine bottle photography with Sonoma Bottle, you have the option to donate some (or all) of your wine to the foundation for a tax-deduction.  It saves you on shipping and handling (or on a round trip to pick your bottles up from the studio), does good for the youth of Sonoma County, and saves you at tax time.

 

Bottle Shot Photography Service in Sonoma County, Sonoma Bottle - partners with the B-Rad foundation

Sonoma Bottle is Live!

Bottle Shot Photography Studio Now Open

Sonoma Bottle is excited to announce that we are here, live, and serving the wine bottle photography needs of the Sonoma and Napa regions (as well as anyone else who has wine to sell and access to UPS/FedEx/USPS/GSO).

Over the past few months we've been meeting with wine industry marketing experts to refine our business model, price point, and studio workflow to best serve our winery customers bottle shot needs.  We're very proud of what we've built and the affordable $60 per bottle price tag that we've been able to lock down.

Collaborating with a network of the finest photographers and retouchers in the greater Bay area we're also happy to be able to offer scaleable creative services for any still or video need that your winery business dreams of.

Need a classic bottleshot? We've got you covered; fast, affordable, beautiful.

Just want to swap vintages on existing photography? No problem, happy to help!

Need a complete advertising campaign shoot? We're a direct line to the best talent in the area (in fact, we are that talent).

Video? Of course!

Keep any eye out for the work we'll be sharing here on the blog and on our social media feeds (we're kind of partial to instagram @sonomabottle).

Sonoma Bottle - Bottle Shot Photography for the Wine Industry.  Serving Napa and Sonoma wineries with beautiful photography for an amazing price.