Illovo Central view towards Sandton

Movers and Shakers

How strongly do you buy into the power of visual content to amplify your marketing and online media? If you’re anything like our valued client FWJK, you’re fully on board and leveraging it to the benefit of your business and brand. What started out as a casual introduction over a cup of coffee has blossomed into our excellent relationship with the highly professional team of engineers and project managers at this dynamic and dedicated property development company.

With specialist insight and input from the FWJK team, we capture the journey of each new development, from turning the first sod of soil to completion of their “AAA” grade high-rise office blocks in Sandton, Johannesburg – the heart of Africa’s financial hub. An effective strategy that we’ve implemented together is to create a quarterly update video and series of photos of the progress achieved over the previous 3 months, until completion of each project.

This is particularly appreciated by the stakeholders and investors, as they get to see the awe-inspiring work that results in each building rising up from an empty piece of land and growing every quarter into a towering icon. Premium finishes and fittings add the final touches to what will become a sought-after base for the prospective tenants and owners, as they proudly share their new abode with their clients, friends and families.

The video below shows FWJK’s latest development, Illovo Central, going up in the exclusive location between St Davids Marist in Oxford Road and the iconic Summer Place conference centre in Mellville Rd. It will be an 18 story “AAA” office facility, eventually sharing its ground floor with Illovo Point which is directly next to it, to create an upmarket retail experience for diners and shoppers. The video depicts the building progress from February to end April, 2019:

This strategy is a classic example of a modern corporate or commercial business adapting to the times and utilising the best possible platforms to market, inform and archive their exceptional achievements in the form of time-lapse videos, aerial video and stills, as well as traditional ground-based videography and photography. Including photos and footage of key players in the projects adds interest and appeal too, bringing the coverage vibrantly to life.

How can your business benefit from leveraging compelling visual content and archival media to ramp up the impact of your marketing? We’d love to discuss the value in this, as it applies to your specific requirements and industry, with a view to applying our extensive experience and expertise to support your business growth. Please contact us if you’re interested in exploring ideas and options. We’d love to assist.

Dimanzi Eau De Parfum

Premium Product Pics

Do you have a need for compelling product photography? If so, you likely know that creativity and attention to detail are key to success. This is particularly relevant when these principles have also been applied to the product being photographed. For example, a significant amount of time, attention and care went into creating the beautiful Dimanzi perfume and branding that you see here.

We had the pleasure of attending an enchanting presentation recently by Di Thompson, the founder of Dimanzi. She has a captivating story, infused with meaning, that spans her experiences in South Africa and France, including studying at the prestigious House of Guerlain on the Champs Elysees in Paris. Her journey led to her creating this “rainbow floral green fragrance with fresh and woody notes capturing the essence of our African spirit and aligning it with true French chic”.

Each aspect of the product and packaging has been specifically selected by Di, from the essential oils that are sourced from Grasse in France (the home of many great perfumes) and the glass beads that are made by local women in the rural areas of the Kwa Zulu Natal Midlands in South Africa, to the black and white zebra design that reflects Di’s personal Burchell heritage. The name Dimanzi also intentionally combines her name with the word “Manzi” which means water in the Zulu language.

To photograph this gorgeous product, we placed it on the light table in our studio and used a combination of 3 flash lights with adjustable intensity. Two of the lights were set up to shine through soft boxes, from either side of the light table, a bit above and in front of the product. A third light was positioned on the floor beneath the light table, shining upwards through a sheet of blue gel, which looks like a piece of extra strength cellophane. That created the blue glow in the background of the image.

This is one example of how to showcase a product with the introduction of a colour hue to contribute mood. Of course videography can evoke another level of interaction and sensory involvement, combining the art of motion with audio cues that can orchestrate emotion and motivate action in your viewers. We love to do both, hence why we’ve specialised in photography and videography genres since launching Outdoor Video & Photographic over 18 years ago.

If you’re looking for fresh ideas and professional photos and videos to showcase your products, contact us today to discuss how we can help.

Happy Rescue Pup Playing in a Park

Fun Pet Videos

On a lighter than usual note, let’s explore some of the aspects that can contribute to fun pet videos, starting with playful pets! If you’re anything like us, you’re quite possibly a dog lover, who appreciates how instinctively they live in the moment and enjoy life to the full. Storm (our Golden Retriever) and Sky (our rescue pup) take this to the next level at our favourite local park.

It’s expansive and beautiful, including open grassy fields, shade-dappled forest sections, a sparkling river and irresistible dams. Well, to Storm especially. He adores playing in water, not to mention any mud puddle that crosses his path, no matter how shallow and the messier the better! We plan our walk, or run in their case, to reach a big dam near the end of it, so that he can splash into the deep water and get a good wash before leaping into the back of our car. Sky is more circumspect, following his older brother a bit more cautiously, but always having his ears perked high with curiosity and eagerness to share in Storm’s unbridled joy.

Capturing this exuberant energy is the key to shooting fun pet videos, which can be made more interesting for your friends and followers when you also feature here and there in the footage, as I do in the above video, interacting with our dogs. Adding a light-hearted, royalty-free music track can add to the fun factor, together with editing your footage into a creative series of short, varied clips that alternate wider positioning shots with tighter ones where your pet is zoomed in close to the camera.

It’s worth setting up your shots for best effect, as Dave and I did by collaborating on the fly. I called our boys to me and held them for a few seconds while Dave got the GoPro camera ready. Then I let them go as he called them to him, resulting in the clips you can see above where they charged straight for the camera and then swerved past it at the last moment. What obliging little stars!

Dave & Naomi Estment's Dogs Storm & Sky

This took a minimal amount of time to shoot, edit and format to a practical size, in the natural course of a laid-back Sunday. It was super fun to share with family and friends via WhatsApp and social media. Few things in life bring smiles to our faces as swiftly as seeing pets having a blast being themselves. We humans can learn a whole lot from them, don’t you think?

If you’d like to lean more about shooting your own pet videos, feel free to post a question in the comments below 😀