Photography and Video in Dorset
We shoot photography and film video for businesses across Dorset and Somerset, in house from our studio on South Street in Sherborne. Product, brand, food, interiors and industrial work, plus social content, product films and case study video. You own the images and the footage outright, and shooting both in one session costs considerably less than booking two.
What we shoot
- Product photography. Clean packshots on white or a chosen background, multiple angles, detail shots, and the cut-outs e-commerce platforms need.
- Lifestyle and in situ. The product in a real setting with real light, which is what actually sells it on social and on a homepage.
- Brand, team and premises. Founders, makers, staff, the workshop, the factory floor, the shop. The images that make a business look like a real one rather than a stock library.
- Food and drink. Styled and shot for producers and hospitality. Bottles, jars, plated dishes, ingredients, process.
- Interiors and property. Rooms, spaces and buildings shot to look like somewhere people want to be.
What we film
- Social content. Short vertical video built for Instagram, TikTok and Reels. Cut to length, captioned, and delivered in the aspect ratios each platform actually wants rather than one file cropped badly three ways.
- Product films. The thing being used, opened, worn, poured or assembled. Short, clear, and the single most useful asset a product page can carry.
- Process and behind the scenes. How something gets made and who makes it. For businesses selling craft, provenance or expertise, this is usually the footage that does the most work.
- Brand films. A longer piece for the homepage, a trade stand or a pitch. Interview-led or narrated, scripted properly before anyone turns a camera on.
- Case study and testimonial video. Clients talking about the work, filmed and edited so it doesn't look like a phone propped against a laptop.
- Event and site coverage. Shows, launches, fairs and installations, cut into something usable the same week rather than three months later.
Industries we work with
Anything that needs to be seen properly to be sold or understood. In practice that has meant:
- Food and drink. Producers, drinks brands, hospitality and farm shop suppliers.
- Homeware and interiors. Furniture, ceramics, textiles, candles, lighting.
- Jewellery and accessories. Small, reflective and difficult, which is exactly why it needs doing properly.
- Fashion and textiles. Flat lay, mannequin, on-model and detail.
- Manufacturing and industrial. Products, plant, process and people. Often the least photographed businesses and the ones with the most to gain.
- Building, heritage and trade. Materials, finishes, sites and completed work.
- Property and hospitality. Interiors, exteriors, rooms and grounds.
- Professional and financial services. Team, premises and brand imagery for businesses that don't have a physical product to photograph.
If your sector isn't on that list it doesn't mean we can't shoot it. The technical problem is usually the same one wearing different clothes.
Shot here, not sent out
Most agencies subcontract this work. Yours gets booked with a freelance photographer, then separately with a videographer, each quoted separately and scheduled around their availability, and if anything comes back wrong the agency is passing messages between you and people you've never met.
We shoot and film ours. That has practical consequences rather than just being a nice line. Reshoots don't require a new booking or a new invoice. If we're building your website or running your ads, the person behind the camera knows the crop ratios, the background colours and the empty space the layouts need, because they've seen the layouts. And when a product changes or a new line launches, you're not starting the whole procurement process again for four photographs and a fifteen second clip.
What retailers and marketplaces actually require
This catches out more businesses than anything else, and it's the reason perfectly good work sometimes gets rejected.
Wholesale buyers, retailer portals, distributor catalogues and online marketplaces all publish image and video specifications, and they don't match each other. Pure white backgrounds at specific values. Minimum pixel dimensions. Product occupying a set percentage of the frame. Cut-outs on transparent backgrounds as PNG. Maximum video lengths and file sizes. Square crops for one platform, four-to-five for another, nine-to-sixteen for a third.
We'll ask which retailers, platforms and channels you're selling through before the shoot rather than after, and deliver a set that meets each of their requirements. It's a five minute conversation that stops you paying for a second shoot.
The same applies to your own website. A product page needs consistent crops and consistent backgrounds across every item or the grid looks wrong, and that's a decision made on the shoot day, not fixable afterwards.
Making video work for search
Video is invisible to search engines and to AI tools unless you give them something to read. They can't watch a film. They can read what's around it.
So every edit comes with the text that makes it findable: a full transcript you can publish on the page, burnt-in or uploaded captions, and a written description. That matters more than it used to, because AI answer engines pull from text and a brand film with no transcript contributes nothing to how a business gets described.
Captions are worth doing on their own merits too. Most social video is watched without sound, and uncaptioned content loses people in the first second for a reason that has nothing to do with how good the film is.
The files are yours
Images, edits and the raw footage. Outright, in perpetuity, for any use. Print, packaging, advertising, trade stands, third-party retailer listings, whatever you need.
Worth checking with anyone you commission, because none of it is the industry default. Photographers frequently license images for a defined use and a defined period, which means the shots you paid for can't legally go on your packaging or expire after two years. Videographers frequently keep the rushes, so if you want a different cut in eighteen months you're paying to film it again rather than paying for an edit.
Music is the one that catches people out after the fact. Stock tracks are usually licensed per use, and some licences lapse with a subscription, which can mean a film you're still running is no longer cleared for the music in it. We'll tell you exactly what the track is licensed for before it goes anywhere near a final edit.
How a shoot works
Before. We agree a shot list, and for video a rough structure or script. What's being photographed, what's being filmed, how many angles and setups, which channels it's all feeding, and any props, styling, talent or site access needed. This is where the retailer specifications get settled. Vague briefs produce vague shoots.
The day. Most shoots are a single day covering both stills and video. We work through the list, show you frames as we go if you're there, and shoot extra coverage where something is working.
After. Selection and editing. Images usually take about a week. Video takes longer, typically two to three weeks depending on the length and how many cuts you need, and you'll see a first edit before anything is finalised.
You're welcome on the shoot and most clients find it useful, particularly where styling or interview decisions are worth making in the room. You're also welcome to leave us to it.
What it costs
Quoted per shoot rather than by day rate or per image, because the variables are the shot list and the deliverables rather than the hours.
What moves the number: how many items or spaces, how many angles and setups each one needs, whether styling, props or talent are involved, whether it's a studio shoot or on location, how much video is being captured, and how many separate edits come out of it.
The biggest saving available is doing more in one session. Setup, lighting and travel are the fixed costs, and they're the same whether you use them for an hour or a day. Stills and video shot together cost far less than two bookings, and twelve products in one day is far cheaper per product than four products across three separate visits.
It's worth planning around that. One properly scoped day can produce a full product set, a brand film, and enough short-form video to post consistently for several months. Commissioning the same material piecemeal across a year costs multiples of that and looks less consistent.
Where we shoot
In the studio in Sherborne, or on location. For a lot of businesses, on location is the better answer: the workshop, the factory, the kitchen, the site, the shop floor. Those images and that footage do something a white background can't, and for any brand selling a story about how or where the thing is made they're usually what gets used most.
Yeovil, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Bruton, Castle Cary, Sturminster Newton and the surrounding villages are a short drive. Further into Dorset and Somerset is fine, and travel is quoted with the shoot rather than appearing afterwards.
When this isn't the problem
Worth saying, because we've watched it happen. Better photography and video make a bad product page look better. They don't make it convert if the pricing is unclear, the delivery information is buried, or the page takes six seconds to load.
We've written about this properly. Read why food brands invest in photography and still don't convert. The argument applies well beyond food.
If the imagery is genuinely the weak link, this is the highest-return spend available to most businesses. If it isn't, we'd rather tell you what is.
See the work
Photography and video for businesses across Dorset, Somerset and further afield. View our work.
