I had the joy of working with Iams pet food on two large advertising photoshoots. Firstly I had to photograph imagery for their brand new pack designs and second up was a lifestyle photos for their website. I was very excited as Iams has been the largest business I’ve worked with to date.

When I first received the brief for pack photography from design agency Sunhouse Creative I have to be honest I was wondering how on earth we would ever capture the shots required. In a nutshell the images had to scream vitality and feature active animals. During the 4 day studio shoot we had to capture cats and dogs jumping in a very specific way to be integrated into the design.

All the animals involved needed to have shiny coats, sparkling eyes and generally be in very good health. The team at Iams selected the cats and dogs from a pet modelling agency so we had some real cuties to work with.

As you can imagine the dogs were easier but still provided a challenge for the whole team. Some jumped too high, some were too fast and some walked around the obstacles which had been set up for them to jump over. After a lot of patience we managed to get the shots required and we must have got through a whole pet shop’s worth of treats. One of the best things about being a Bristol commercial photographer is that my photos will be seen on pet shop and supermarkets shelves all over the world.

Next up was the cats (my favourite, shhhh!) These guys were a whole different kettle of fish. We managed to work with only 4 animals a day as they were very shy to begin with. It literally took an hour to settle the cats down before we even took one photo. By the end of the shoot I was given the nickname “cat whisperer” as eventually I got them all to perform. We managed to figure out how to get one cat jumping and thought we were onto a winner. But cats being cats we had to change strategy with each animal. Tenacity paid off and I’m glad to say it was a massive success.

During the 2 day lifestyle shoot Iams hired a rather fancy home in a posh part of Bristol. Again, we photographed cats and dogs but thankfully the brief here was very relaxed and more about capturing natural moments of the animals interacting with people. The team understood that when working with animals, trying to achieve a very specific shot in this environment would be difficult, time consuming, and the images wouldn’t look as genuine.

Over the 2 days I had to capture around 30 usable images but in the end well over a hundred were selected for a final edit. Many of these have made an appearance on the Iams website.

We moved around different rooms in the property to get as much variation as possible. Each had been beautifully styled using the Iams orange brand colours. Luckily the human models were all big animal lovers making the images look a lot more natural.

If you’re looking for a Bristol commercial photographer to capture the essence of your brand for an ad campaign (big or small!) please email info@simonwithyman.com