From client brief to final results.

The Brief & Direction

The direction Harvest Moon shared at the beginning set the tone immediately. Warm and minimal, feminine yet grounded, Mediterranean and artisanal. Calm, breathable, and elegant.

Although these words represent aesthetic preferences, they are also showing the brand's core values. And that matters in how you approach a shoot.

The goal was to build a cohesive visual language that could work across their website, social media, campaigns, and ecommerce. Not a one-off set of images, but the beginning of a consistent visual identity. A long-term creative partnership.

The First Meeting: Understanding the Vision

We talked about where the brand was heading. Kelly, the owner of Harvest Moon, shared her vision of creating timeless, elegant, and emotionally grounded visuals and moving away from trend based content.

From that conversation, a few things became clear:

The photography needed to be warm, with natural light, soft shadows, minimal compositions, and texture-focused details.

We agreed on a structure for the shoot: for each piece, a mix of product and detail shots alongside lifestyle and model imagery. The kind of content that works across every channel. Close-ups that convert on ecommerce, atmospheric images that tell the story on Instagram, and editorial frames that build brand recognition over time and can be used on the website.

Planning the Shoot: Creative Direction

Once the direction was clear, I put together a visual overview to align on mood, styling, light, and composition before we ever arrived on location. The creative direction and mood board ensure that everyone is working towards the same vision. The model, the photographer, and the client are aware of the general direction, so there are no surprises during or after the shoot.

For Harvest Moon, the references leaned into natural textures, organic shapes, and that specific quality of Mediterranean afternoon light, the kind that makes gold jewellery glow and stand out. The styling followed the same logic: simple, considered, nothing that would compete with the pieces themselves.

The location was always going to be outdoors. The brand's core called for a natural environment, not a studio. Somewhere with texture, with atmosphere, with light that moves.

The Location: Golden Hour by the Ocean

We shot at golden hour on the Portuguese coast, among rocks overlooking the ocean.

A few weeks before, I found the perfect location close to Ericeira on top of some cliffs. Since texture was important, it was the ideal place to shoot the gold jewelry, with white and dark stones as a backdrop.

I had been there before but went again to check out the location around the same time of day we were planning for the shoot. That way, I could already prepare myself beforehand and think about how and where I would like the model to be. I also know that the weather in Ericeira can be a bit tricky to plan around and that sometimes the clouds take over in the last hour before sunset, so I was planning on going a bit earlier than necessary, and it turned out to be just right.

Shooting Day: Where the Creative Work Happens

For this shoot, some frames were carefully composed. Minimal backgrounds, deliberate placement of the jewelry, controlled light. Others were captured in the in between moments, like a turn of the head, a natural glance away from the camera, or the way the fabric moved in the coastal wind.

The behind the scenes content from the day captures that process, the adjustments, the conversations, the moments of collaboration between the photographer, the model, and the pieces themselves.

What the Content Will Be Used For

The images and video from this shoot are designed to work across every layer of Harvest Moon's brand presence:

Ecommerce — clean, well-lit product and detail shots that give customers the information they need to make a decision. The studio pictures for the online shop were taken another day. Just showing it here to showcase all the deliverables.

Social media — atmospheric lifestyle frames, content that communicates a feeling before it communicates a product.

Campaigns — editorial images built to anchor a new collection launch.

Website — hero imagery and supporting visuals that create a consistent, recognisable visual identity from the moment someone lands on the page.

This is what it means to build a visual library rather than just take photographs. Every frame was created with its final use in mind.

Why This Kind of Work Matters

When a brand's images matches the quality of what they make, everything becomes easier. Customers trust faster. Conversion improves. The brand attracts the right audience, people who understand and appreciate what's been built.

Let's plan your brand shoot

I work with independent lifestyle brands and boutique hospitality businesses to create visual stories that communicate the feeling behind what they've built. If you're evolving your brand identity or preparing for a new campaign, I'd love to hear what you're working on.