Happy Earth Day from Studio 3, Inc.

We not only create green brand campaigns for clients, we live them.

Earth Day is the world’s largest environmental movement, celebrating sustainability, environmental protection, and the green movement across the globe. Today, we celebrate the earthy efforts of our team and clients- highlighting six clients who put their green foot forward.

Working to reduce our ecological footprint our team jogs to work, takes the Tri-met and Metro Transit systems, and runs errands on our bikes.

Studio 3 TeamBike Portland

Many members of our team have adopted an eco-friendly plant-based diet, positively impacting the planet with each meal. Here are a few of our favorite neighborhood eateries: Sudra, the Slice Pizza Company, and Providore.

Meet the Studio 3, Inc Team

Studio 3 Service Day

Each year our team decides on a service day to honor our community and environment. This year we volunteered at the Oregon Food Bank’s Eastside Learning Garden to dig in and work together on seasonal gardening projects. We prepped, weeded, and cleared garden beds to then plant rows of swiss chard. Go, team!

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In alignment with our office values, many of our clients strongly believe in and practice social and environmental responsibility.

Stash Tea reuses and recycles packing materials in their shipping department while investing in renewable energy through the purchase of green power through Portland General Electric.

Have you heard of Ecoroofs?

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We captured Portland’s Ecoroof Program for Portland client, Environmental Services. These Ecoroofs replace conventional roofing with a living, breathing vegetated roof system. They save energy, reduce pollution, decrease erosion, and significantly lower stormwater runoff.

Other Studio 3 clients such as Costco, Amazon, Adidas, and Nike do their part to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Costco understands that it has a responsibility to source its products in a way that is respectful to the environment and to the people associated with that environment. Our goal is to help provide a net positive impact for communities in commodity-producing landscapes, by doing our part to help reduce the loss of natural forests and other natural ecosystems, which include native and/or intact grasslands, peatlands, savannas, and wetlands.” – Costco Spokesperson

Amazon has installed rooftop solar on distribution warehouses and has implemented wind and solar farms in Ireland, Switzerland, and the United States.

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Adidas recently unveiled Futurecraft Loop, a running shoe that was made to be re-made. Adidas designed the shoe with 100 percent reusable TPU and it’s constructed with no other added chemicals or adhesives.

Nike started a Reuse-a-Shoe program which encourages its customers to recycle their shoes. The program accepts any brand of athletic shoes and grinds them into new sports surfaces. So far, 28 million shoes have been tossed in the shredder box.

We have entered the era of conscious consumerism.

In need of photography or videography for your farm, production, recycling, or shipping methods to demonstrate your eco-friendly side? Studio 3 will capture the greener side of your company. We’ll bring cameras, drones, and herbivorous snacks.

Happy Earth Day from Studio 3, Inc.

Drones: Bringing you the Bird’s-Eye View

Studio 3, Inc. provides a different perspective with our drone photography and videography in Portland, Seattle, and surrounding areas. With our in-house creative team and drone specialists, we can surely turn your vision into reality.

Studio 3 drone photography and videography
Photo by Josh Romberg

Drones have become a standard in photography and videography. The innovative use of drones can be seen in all types of media, marketing, and advertising. Brands such as Red Bull, Coca-Cola, and GE have turned to aerial imagery on their campaigns. Likewise, a Budweiser commercial took to the sky recently to showcase their switch to 100% renewable electricity from wind power. A message portrayed powerfully by flying above the turbines.

As the use of drones has evolved, so has photography. The technology has advanced rapidly in recent years making it a highly sought-after service. The creativity of drone photography and originality of drone videography leave a lasting impression. From above, everything and anything takes on a different shape, color, and texture.

Studio 3 drone photography and videography
Photo by Josh Romberg

The drone market has grown tremendously. Now more than ever drones allow access to artistic landscapes and imaginative angles. These creative heights would otherwise be difficult to photograph without cost prohibitive, and somewhat dangerous methods. (Cranes, planes, and ladders…yikes.)

Studio 3 drone photography and videography
Photo by Josh Romberg

Do you need a sky-high shot of your product, building, or winery? We’ve got a drone specialist for that.

Drones offer a new perspective and create eye-catching imagery. Something that seems so familiar can be transformed by our creative team and camera with wings. Adding value to your mix of content, Studio 3, Inc. provides expert images and video drone services. Leave it to our skilled photographers to create pristine aerial images and video for your creative needs.

In the confluence of flight, camera, and the harnessing of light lies a magical perspective of the gravity-bound every day that surrounds us. This view is at once powerful and humbling, truly the stuff of dreams. That is the excitement I try to bring to my images every time I put a drone in the air.” Josh Romberg Studio 3, Inc.

Studio 3 drone photography and videography
Photo by Josh Romberg

Take advantage of the creative opportunities drone technology offers and the know-how from the team. As a result, the finished product will astonish your clients and customers. Drone photography is a powerful tool and resource for your campaign to stand out.

Let us take your photography and videography to great heights.

A Focus On Food: Our Tricks And Tips Behind Food + Beverage Photography

Most people don’t think about the way food is photographed – they think about how it will taste! But ask any professional photographer that has worked with food or beverages, and they’ll tell you that there’s a litany of tricks and tips to making food look delicious and distinctive. From Hollywood trickery to spatial geometry – we’ve put together a list of our own to help you capture your next meal with expert-level elegance.

  1. Choosing the right background for the food at hand

Not all surfaces and backgrounds are photogenic. And while others might be beautiful on their own, they still may not necessarily complement the food/beverage at hand. So, what are some factors to consider when selecting a background? Color is a big one. Ideally, you want to avoid overly-bright colors or busy patterns that will distract from your subject. A shiny surface probably wouldn’t be a good choice either. Using neutral or pastel color palettes can go a long way in making your food/beverage ‘pop’- in a similar way that a certain color might bring out a person’s eyes. For instance, if most food contains warm color tones, it might be a good idea to shoot against cool-toned surfaces to create a pleasing contrast. If you want to learn more about how to create ‘color harmony,’ check out this helpful article on the subject, which also includes some useful guides.
You can also use the background to express character, suggest a mood, or establish a sense of place. Here’s a photo taken by Studio 3’s very own David Bell, which showcases a delicious chocolate cake placed in a rustic environment. The flooring suggests farm-style, naturalism, organic ingredients etc., while the rich brown tones in the wood compliment the chocolate perfectly.     
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  1. Knolling style – to use or not to use?

You may not be familiar with the term, but you’re definitely familiar with the style. ‘Knolling’ refers to this style of photography:
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Bright + even lighting, Birds-Eye point-of-view, and a meticulous arrangement of items. First popularized in 1987 by a janitor who would fastidiously arrange the various construction tools he found around the warehouse, ‘Knolling’ photography has recently taken over Instagram as one of the most prolific trends in recent years – and has also found a strong niche in food/beverage photography. It’s easy to see why: if executed correctly, Knolling photography has a unique way of making any subject look bold and dazzling – even if it’s just some popcorn. Right angles, clusters of color, and clean/crisp lines are the name of the game. An appreciation of image composition, as well as the spatial relationships between objects will help your Knolling photography soar.

  1. Using mist, glycerine, and other fakery

Want that ultra-fresh, dripping condensation look? Simply hit your glass with some mist! Or even better yet, many professionals will use Glycerin to the same effect. It gives your food/drinks a cold, fresh look, which in turn makes them appear more delectable. This is especially true of foods like fruits and veggies. If you see food in photographs looking wet or frosty, then you can bet your top dollar that glycerin was used! Think of your classic vending machine: can you picture those big water droplets rolling off a cold can of Coke on the front image? Yup, that’s either mist or Glycerin.
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If your image requires ice, we highly suggest the use of fake ice cubes. Obviously, real ice melts, thus requiring frequent re-sets, which can take time and money away from your project (and also make a mess!). If you happen to be using glass, real ice will also cause significant fogging, obscuring your subject even more. These are just a few of the reasons professional photographers have embraced the use of fake ice and other perishable food prop replacements.   

  1. Styling: Paint, pins, and putty

Screen Shot 2018-11-07 at 1.00.32 PMIt takes a fine touch. There are countless cosmetic steps food stylists can take to improve the overall quality and composition of your food/beverage photography. Remember, we’re not actually serving the food, so no need to shy away from using un-edible items to get the necessary shot. Metal pins, for instance, can be used to hold food in place if you want to display the perfect balance of ingredients without them falling over. Photographer and food stylists will also use non-stick putty to the same effect, like so:
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Ultimately, it’s about arranging and styling your subject to maximize it’s photogenic potential. Is your food stackable, or should it be fanned out, serving style? Does your subject have green stems? Should a side dish be included? What about some unique serving flatware? You can even utilize acrylic paint to boost colors, cover up blemishes, and even create patterns if desired. Get creative here! Like any good dish, there is a lot more to the finished product than merely the sum of the individual parts. It’s about how they all interact!
Here at Studio 3 Inc., we not only specialize in food and beverage photography, but also portraiture, lifestyle, sports, and product photography. Since 1974, we’ve been making your photography dreams come to life! Partner with us for your next creative endeavor, and see just how we stay inspired.
 

HOW DO YOU HUE? Three Ways Studio 3 Makes It Pop

When is the last time you were blown away by an image? Why was that? Perhaps you noticed a vivid background, strategically hued font, or impressively monochromatic scheme. You noticed color. Color impacts product integrity, branding, and consumer reactions.
A lot of components go into creating “the shot,” and Studio 3, Inc. handles them all from styling to post production. Our colorful team is here to make your visual dreams pop off the screen.
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1.  On-Set Color Matching
Royal blue textured paper, the precise shade of orange gel, and Craig Wagner’s masterful lighting will get you out of any pickle. Our stylists and photographers address the details on set to ensure color is spot on from project start to finish.
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2. Add a Little Retouching Magic
In addition to phenomenal photography – we have a top-of-the-line digital team equipped with the tools to save you time and money, making your technicolor dreams come true. They are our color wizards: flawlessly color matching, and coloring up your product photography.
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3. Set Your Social Scene
It is important to be visible, impactful, and purposeful with social media posts so that potential clients can easily find what they might be looking for. Let us help you content create.
We like to use Instagram as a social portfolio. Our audience can then see that beyond our stellar images, we have an eye for style, beauty, and purpose. It’s important to keep content fresh, colorful, and trendy for your followers and future followers.
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Color psychology plays an important role in your marketing goals. Research has shown that color branding influences 90% of shopping decisions. That is a number opportunity we definitely would not want to miss.

What colors are consumers loving this month? Season? Year?

What does this mean for you? How can we help?

The most exciting part of the rainbow world in which we work is getting to put our skills to good use. Our commitment to client satisfaction and beautiful photography is unmatched in our field. From styling – to shooting – to retouching – to bragging about our clients – we love keeping life colorful. DO HUE?
 
 

Tis The Season For Client Comfort

The hustle and bustle of the holiday season; To-do lists unroll to the floor, coffee is taken through IV drips, and the studio always vaguely smells of cookies.

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During the holiday season we understand you would rather be at home with a book and warm cup of Stash Tea, so we have done what we can to bring the cozy here.
Cue the elves (aka Studio 3, Inc.’s production team,) sit back, relax, and let us make your photographic dreams come true.
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We have decked the halls, strung the ornaments, and lit the client area with holiday cheer.
The Studio 3 Inc. creative team not only does whatever it takes to make your project a success, we do it while feeding you cookies and telling you jokes.
…We have even been known to have Fashion Santa drop by every now and then (We know him!)
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Our studio is equipped with ample snacks, coffee as strong as our wifi connection, tea, any magazine you could dream of, and a crazy amount of crayons for the kid in you.
There are multiple conference rooms available for those times when you just need to be alone. Client meeting, business call, or impromptu dance party; We’ve got you covered.
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We pride ourselves in providing a comprehensive client experience. Not only can you expect top of the line photography but also a welcoming work environment, great food, and even better company.
Drop us a line, let’s talk photography! We’re here 24 hours a day, it feels like, but let’s say 9-5. We can’t wait to work with you.
Happy Holidays!!

Let's Unpack This: A Look Inside Studio 3's Location Lighting Kit

When shooting lifestyle or product photography on location in the Pacific Northwest you rarely know what you’re going to get. The rain gods in our home states of Oregon and Washington are prevalent and powerful. Deluge or mist, the Studio 3 team arrives on location prepared for anything.
How do we juggle variously lit environments, keep a tight timetable and budget, and still exceed our client expectations? Experience. We have perfected our method in the madness that is this glorious industry.  Now, thanks to the Internet and the power of social media marketing, we are able to share some of that wisdom with you.

What does the Studio 3, Inc. team need to create beautiful photography on location, you ask?

Be it a location shoot for Danner Boots, ShedRain Umbrellas, Amazon, or Kaiser Permenante our fail-safe location lighting kit includes;

  • Radio Slaves
  • 3 Lighting Stands
  • 3 ft. Soft box
  • Medium Umbrella
  • AA Batteries
  • CTB Gel
  • CTO Gel
  • Light Meter

This minimalistic kit is best used for atmospheric, lifestyle, and commercial work.
“[This lighting kit] is best used in situations where your key light is the light already available. When working on location you’re supplementing available light with the strobes you bring with you. An important part of that is to match the color temperature of that available light—we do this using gels [CTB or CTO]. This allows you to separate your subject from the background and really focus the viewer’s attention on the product. ” – Joshua Romberg, Photographer
In need new lifestyle photography for your next campaign? Give us a shout; we’ll get the gear.

Digital Retouching, Can you Didg’ it?

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

The million dollar question: What sets us apart from all of the other photography studios in the PNW? Well, quite a few things. But it’s hard to talk about them all in 500 words, so I am going to focus on our in-house digital department.
Not only are our digital artists pixel-perfect, they have the ability to turn photos around faster than I can type this sentence. No, we’re not a marketing agency, but we love working with them. We are photography pioneers. We look past the norm and find answers to questions you have yet to ask. How? Magic. Or Intuition, as they call it nowadays.
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Our award-winning photographers work closely with clients and the digital artists who render our images flawless. Communication is our biggest secret for success.

“Without each other, the quality standards we achieve here would not be possible.” -Craig Wagner, Photographer

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“Having an in-house [digital department] allows me to have face-to-face conversation before, during, and after a shoot. Whether we’re discussing how we should approach a job, or what my intention was in how I shot it, I have the asset of having a digital team that feels like an extension of myself.”
Craig Wagner, Photographer

Our digital team not only makes photos look better in post, they help the photographers shoot more efficiently. It’s photography plus.

“I have the opportunity to talk directly with clients, nipping problems in the bud, saving everyone time and money. We remove a step for the client without compromising the photos.” –Michelle Smith, Lead Digital Artist

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Working with a vast array of clients, we have shot some behemoths over the years; trains, planes, and automobiles to name a few. That’s a lot of surface area to make drop-dead gorgeous, which is why we keep stylists on the ready to spot check, scrub out smudges, and make sure each vehicle’s best side is showing. But we don’t have favorites. Whether it be a fleet for Freightliner, or a detailed shot of a Leatherman tool, each job gets the same level of attentiveness and digital mastery.

“It all breaks down to textures and tones. Fifteen minutes of proper styling and lighting prep during a shoot can save an hour of digital retouching.” –Michelle Smith

So what’s next? We are dreaming up bigger and better ways to make you look fabulous. Stay tuned, we’re 40 years young and constantly evolving.
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Something Only an '80s Kid Would Remember- Studio 3, Inc.'s First Digital Camera

 

Digital Photography in 1993 = Big, Ugly, and Awesome… and boy did we think we were cool. Before the digital camera was the norm, it was enormous!

David-Bell
 
Take a Hasselblad, attach a HUGE digital back, and add cooling fans, a dehumidifying unit, and a large filter wheel, then you can start to imagine our first digital camera. The digital back was a Scitex Leaf DCB, it was 4 megapixels, and it cost $36,000. All of this was attached to a computer slower than molasses, packing a whopping 8 megabytes of RAM.
To take a picture, you would trigger the camera at the computer. The filter would rotate in front of lens to red and shoot. Then green and shoot. Then blue and shoot. One million years later, you would see the image come up on the computer. By aligning the three layers in the camera software, you got to finally see the finished photograph. Piece of cake, really.
This software really was sophisticated. The early versions had a button that was labeled “Guess”… we didn’t like to click that, but it worked. Later versions changed the label to “Auto,” a little easier to stomach.
The thing they must have hidden in the fine print was how much the lenses would be used. Every time you took a shot, it was actually three shots. Due to the fact that our equipment was being used three times as often we had a lot of lenses going in for repair and rebuild. The local shop got to know us pretty well and would give us the heads up when it were time to retire a lens.
This was the beginning of digital photography in the commercial world. It was a huge investment for the studio, and we where the first to take the plunge. It brings back a lot of fun and crazy memories, not to mention the price!  $2000.00 for a 2gig hard drive… and that was a Deal!
What a ride it has been.

Stop, Prop and Roll!

How’d you make it look so GOOD? Well, my dears, it takes quite a bit of searching to find just the right prop. Ask our producers and stylists, they’ve got TONS of hilarious stories about finding the perfect prop for the job!

Everything including the kitchen sink.
Everything including the kitchen sink.

Stepping into our prop library, you’ll see that we have multiple racks with bins filled with fabric, sport helmets, fruit, tech supplies, mortars and pestles, and pretty much any object you can fathom. We keep it so organized, Martha Stewart would cry with pride.

Oh haiiiii, welcome to the prop library =^.^=
Oh haiiiii, welcome to the prop library =^.^=

We keep a hefty inventory of household items on hand to recreate life-like sets. Cups, picture frames, hand towels; we’ve got all the odds-and-ends to spruce up a set. Of course we have a plethora of other homestyle necessities too: luggage, bird cages, mannequins and a gas mask.

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No prop library is complete without a gas mask.

The prop library in our Seattle studio even has a fully functional shop attached to it, for when we need to build things for a shoot. What kind of things do we build for shoots? Kitchens, bathrooms, tables, even this beautifully lush “front yard.”

You can almost smell the fresh cut grass.
You can almost smell the fresh cut grass.

Need fruit, flowers, pie, towels, perhaps a stethoscope? We’ve got it! All sorts of items are constantly being added to our prop library and we are happy to add more to meet your needs. Give us a call and let’s get started on your photoshoot today.