Photography Case Study

The brief

Caffe Rizzoli is a prosecco bar and Caffe that draws from Italian culture and heritage, together with style and sophistication. They are based in Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield, however had recently opened up at a new location – Intu Lakeside Shopping Centre in Thurrock.

Having previously been the ‘360 champagne bar’ before Rizzoli took over, customers of the shopping centre were failing to see that Rizzoli served food as well as drink. This was due to the bar not being in the ‘food court’ section of the shopping centre and their use of stock imagery food on their promotional materials.

How did we deliver?

The shoot took place at Rizzoli’s Prosecco Bar and Caffe in Intu Lakeside, shooting for roughly two hours on the day, from 3pm until 5pm. We brought just one camera and lighting (panels and Arris) to the shoot as customers were still sat in the bar and we wanted to make sure their experience was still pleasant. We kept to one side of the bar so that customers could still get served and we were out of the way.

As we were shooting food and drink, the bartenders had made the cocktails in front of us. We got shots of the cocktails being made on the bar (shaken and poured into a glass) as well as images of the drink once finished lined up next to each other. While we shot cocktail and drinks content, the chefs produced the food in the kitchen for us to photograph as this took a little longer to put together. We took pictures of the chefs in action, as well as getting close up images of the food for menus, social media pages, website and promotional materials. We had to make sure no customers were in the images which was a little tricky due to the prosecco bar being open (no walls surround the bar) but we managed to get around this through the use of macro-style shots.

As Rizzoli is also well known for its high-end Italian prosecco, we shot images of their bottles in an ice cooler which was also placed on the bar. We rubbed ice cubes on the bottles to give them a ‘droplet’ effect, which combined with the macro lens on our camera looked great. We also use the same process for photographing their beers.

Rizzoli also stocks premium Italian gins which are unable to buy in local stores, which is a unique selling point of the Caffe. We photographed these lined up on the bar for promotional use. They also sell a combination of prosecco and handmade chocolates for special occasions – another aspect of the business which was overlooked by customers due to no promotion or advertisement.

As the kitchen was the only part of the bar/Caffe with walls it made it a lot darker. We used extra lighting for a better finish to the images and allow the food and drink to look as good as it tastes.

After the shoot, we went back to the office and offloaded all the images, sorting through out-takes and blurry shots. We chose roughly the 50 best images to edit and applied the same effects to them all, so they looked consistent. Some images needed extra tweaking to lighten/brighten the photos.

We had a quick turnaround, sending the images back to Rizzoli to use within 2 working days for them to use!

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