The team at The Swiss Bakery in Springfield, Virginia, right outside of Washington D.C., that specializes in Swiss pastries & food items. They were getting ready to update their 20 year old website to reflect what their current business looks like and speak to a modern customer. 

Working with a website designer

Many of clients are at the point where they are working with other design professionals. The Swiss Bakery simultaneously working with a website designer, Madison of Marsh and Maritime Branding, & they knew they needed quality images to add to their new website. For me as a photographer, it is so good to know exactly what I’m shooting for, so that I can effectively shoot for what the client needs. In this case, Madison, the bakery’s website designer, already had the bones of the website built, so she knew the images that they needed for specific areas of the site & orientation of the images (especially important for banner/header images).

Product first images

The forefront of The Swiss Bakery’s product line up is their amazing breads and pasteries and they wanted them captured from the Back of House (being made) as well as the Front of House (in the cases & being sold to customers). Their goal for their website was to showcase their amazing products, so when photographing their brand session, the images were captured in a way that was more about the products being made by people, rather than concentrating on the people making the products (yes there’s a difference).

Early morning shoot

So much of a bakery’s inner workings are done in early morning hours, before most people are up. The bakery opened up to customers at 8:00am, so I showed up at 7:00am to ensure I could capture the preparation and baking of breads, finishing touches of pasteries, and fully stocked shelves and cases. As I was shooting, I kept tabs on what was going on around the bakery, jumping around from activity to activity based on what was happening around the bakery. I was out of there by 9:00am when they really started getting their morning rush, allowing the team to concentrate on their customer’s needs. 

Bakery Shotlist:

Back of House:

• Fruit tarts or French fruit cake being finished with fruit or being glazed
• French Pastries being finished/Trays of French pastries being filled
• Bread pulled out from oven
• Baker dough work
• Egg sandwich being made/finished in café
• Demi- Baguette Sandwiches being made
• Cookie Station: cookies being cut/ taken out of oven/finished
• Large Mixer in use
• Rod finishing a cake in red room (After 8am)

Front of House: 

• Breakfast pastry case – zoom in on sticky bun/Danishes/Berliners
• Bread shelves being stocked/full  – Zoom in on Wurzelbrot/Basler/Snowflake/Pretzels
• Breakfast pastries spread rack full
• Wooden arches/Wood Details – wide shot of counter
• Swiss retail items shelf – Chicco D’Oro Coffee, Swiss Chocolates
• Wine and beer shelves
• SwissAlp Wall & Swiss Train – A wide shot (you will see what I mean when I give you the virtual tour)
• French pastry trays
• Espresso or Latte being made
• Drip coffee being poured in cup with red sleeve
• Item on plates in staff hands – could be a pastry or café item
• From Café – Berner Rosti dish on expo counter to be brought out to customer
• Café Bell