I did this portrait photography shoot a couple of weeks ago in—of all the random locations—Walmart! I’ve noticed a lot of photographers choosing department stores, supermarkets, and other non-traditional locations. It’s basically a fun challenge to shoot in a difficult environment that isn’t super aesthetically pleasing, and see if you can make it look good anyway. I’ve wanted to give it a try for a while now, and finally got my chance.
I collaborated with another photographer, Tabor Cote, to do this session. We’d never met before, but we connected on Instagram, liked each other’s work, and decided to get together for a shoot. Our model, Sophie, had worked with Tabor before, but this was my first time working with her. She was super fun, had a great personality, and was really easy to work with.
So, how does a department store shoot work? It’s different than any other type of session I’ve done before, that’s for sure! For one thing, we got a lot of curious looks. As a photographer, if people see you working the camera in a scenic park or around a couple in formal attire, it’s pretty easy for them to see what you’re up to, and they don’t give it a second thought. Not so if you’re looking at everything in Walmart through a lens. You could tell people were wondering what the heck we were doing. I half-expected somebody to approach us and either kick us out or demand an explanation, but no one ever did.
We made use of the wrapping paper, Christmas trees, and fake flowers. And of course, no American grocery store shoot would be complete without featuring the classic Doritos and Coke combination. Other than that, we just kind of wandered the aisles and took pictures of anything that caught our eye. We even grabbed a few shots in the paint aisle.
When we got to the food aisles we decided to get a shot of Sophie with a full grocery cart. You don’t realize how much those things can hold until you really try to get one heaping full. It took us about fifteen minutes to get it piled high with groceries. We each just started grabbing our favorite snacks and tossing them into the cart, all while sharing stories and details about why we loved those particular snacks. It was a ton of fun.
Sophie is a dancer, so we got some really unique shots of her dancing in the aisles. (More weird looks.) We had a great time though.
The indoor fluorescent lighting was a little difficult to work with. It definitely made color correcting a bit trickier, but I did this shoot for the challenge, so I didn’t mind. I was super happy with the way it turned out and love the festive vibe we were able to get even in a less than ideal locale. Like I said, I’ve had a department store shoot on my bucket list for a while now. It was great to finally make it happen!
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