They say the best things come to those who wait, and the results of this shoot were two months in the planning. I was contacted by Romi Desani, founder of the beauty brand UN_DID via the agency Truffle who I had previously done some work for in 2020.

Romi had started UN_DID because he felt there was not nearly enough representation of Asian/POC people in the beauty space. He had sought to use his brand to normalise individuality in the everyday, and take inspiration from South Asian culture.

He wanted to put together a branded shoot for product photography, model visuals and short clips/videos, all to be used across website and socials, for which he felt my style and aesthetic could align perfectly. Romi also wanted the new imagery to place UN_DID as much as a lifestyle brand rather than just an ingredient-centred/beauty one.

With what he wanted to achieve with the shoot, I essentially took on the role of co-creative director as well as producer and photographer (phew). The production side for me didn’t feel like a huge stretch, given I seem to take on that role as well as that of art director (as well as photographer!) for my own self-initiated collaborative shoots.

Throughout the process, we were constantly refining the way we wanted brand came across in the new visuals, from how the products were to be captured to the model casting, right down to deciding the studio we felt best suited to the content we were looking to shoot. Ultimately, we settled on a concept and tone that we billed as Benetton-branches-out-into-the-beauty-and-lifestyle-space.

For us, the casting of the models was as crucial as the capturing of the product content, and we really wanted to cast diverse people of colour who had the kind of personality we felt would help us create images that showed joy and spirit without feeling too staged. We ended up casting three models, Tanya, Pat and Nandi all from the same agency, BAME.

Romi came up with the idea of using clothing branded with different variations of the UN_ branding, which I think worked well with the images we shot and played well with the Bennetton-inspired theme.

After a look at studios, we finally settled on Studio Rogue, a lovely space in South London. It proved to be perfect, small enough for the team to feel comfortable but large enough for us as a team to move around in comfortably. Despite the studio having perfectly useable lighting, we managed to do the entire shoot using the available daylight we had on the day (thank you, UK weather).

Although it was a long shoot day, the entire team were amazing to work with, and managed to sustain great energy throughout the entire shoot. The models really made the effort to show a range of expression and personality that helped elevate the images beyond the standard model shots, and Cat our videographer captured some great footage.

All in all, the shoot proved to be a great success, with a set of both stills and video assets that Romi was incredibly happy with. You can see final shots from the project here.

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UN_DID Brand Re-launch