Photography for olive mills and extra virgin producers

The colour of the oil is a fact, not a preference

The green of an extra virgin is among the first things a buyer compares, and the first thing to go false in a photograph: dark glass, the mixed light of a processing hall, the cast of a shed. It is held with a colour reference taken on site and a check of the file against the real sample, so that what is seen online and what is held in the hand agree.

Dark glass reflects more than clear glass

A dark bottle is unforgiving: it gives back half the room in one long reflection, and the label has to stay flat and legible on a surface that is close to a mirror. Tins are the twin problem in reverse — printed tinplate scratches, dents and throws hard highlights — and they have to be made to look precious rather than industrial.

The grove and the mill are the part you are missing

Picking, nets, delivery, washing, malaxing, the first oil coming through. It is the material the institutional pages need, and the importer's sheet, and the sustainability story, and the announcement of the new crop. Almost no mill has it up to date, because it can only be made in those two or three weeks a year.

A harvest is photographed when it happens, not when it suits you

The olive campaign is a narrow window in the year, and in those weeks the company has work to do, not poses to strike. That means building the shoot around your calendar rather than ours, moving inside the rhythm of the work without asking for poses and without stopping the line. It is the only way the images come out true, and it shows.

One image, many formats

E-commerce wants the bottle cut out. The importer wants the label flat and high-resolution for the technical sheet. Retail's digital shelf wants the long format, social wants the vertical, the trade fair wants the big one. Same product, five different files: they are planned into the same set rather than revisited with every request.