About Studio Ballena
Advertising visuals for food, drinks and products, built on craft, precision and 15 years of tabletop experience.
Studio Ballena is a Belgian advertising photography and video production studio specialising in food, drinks and product visuals. Based in Welle, between Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp, the studio works with advertising agencies, brand teams and production companies across Belgium and internationally, delivering photography, video and motion control visuals for advertising campaigns, packaging, social and brand content.
The person behind the studio
Studio Ballena was founded by Bert Balcaen, a photographer and director with over 15 years of experience in advertising and tabletop production. His route into photography is less straightforward than most, and that background is a big part of how the studio works.
Bert studied industrial product design and graphic industry management, which gave him an early grounding in both the manufacturing and the visual side of commercial production. That led to a career in the family business, a flexible packaging production company, where he spent more than a decade as plant manager. Running production at that level means understanding quality control, tight deadlines, technical precision and what it costs when things go wrong. Those aren't lessons you learn in a photography course, and they show up every day in how Studio Ballena is run.
After 5 years working alongside a mentor in the photographic industry, Bert set up Studio Ballena in Welle about 15 years ago, with a clear focus: advertising photography and video for food, drinks and products.
The background in packaging and graphic production turns out to be unusually relevant for this work. Understanding FMCG brands, and what a brand manager or agency creative director actually needs from an image, is industry knowledge rather than photographic intuition. Conversations with clients start from a different place, and briefs that seem technically complex are often familiar territory.
What Studio Ballena does
The studio specialises in three connected areas of advertising visuals production.
Photography and video production
The core of the studio, from clean packshots and hero product images to full advertising campaigns with food styling, set building and cinematic video. The studio handles the whole process from concept and pre-production to final delivery, or works as a specialist production partner within agency or brand workflows.
Motion control and special effects
This is where Studio Ballena stands apart from most Belgian production studios. The studio operates Ernie, a CRX1440 motion control robot, alongside custom built special effects rigs for triggering liquids, powders, ingredients and products with frame accurate precision. That makes the studio well suited to splash shots, ingredient explosions, slow motion pours, multipass compositing and repeatable camera moves: work that needs engineering level control as much as creative direction.
Studio and equipment
The studio in Welle is built for tabletop photography and video, with room for several sets at once, full blackout and a large stock of props and surfaces. Cameras, lighting and grip are all in house.
Who Studio Ballena works with
The client base spans advertising and design agencies, FMCG brands, food and beverage producers, packaging designers and production companies. Past and current clients include Neuhaus, Barry Callebaut, Guylian, Nestlé Health Science, Tupperware, BMW, Geometry Global, Absintt, Halyard, Kingspan and others across Belgium and internationally.
Studio Ballena works in two ways, depending on what a project needs: as a full service production partner, handling creative development, production and post, or as a specialist that plugs into an existing agency or production workflow for specific phases, such as motion control operation, tabletop direction, or studio and equipment.
The studio and equipment are also available for rent, with or without crew, for directors, DOPs and production houses looking for a well equipped tabletop studio in central Belgium. The motion control robot always comes with its operator.
Trusted by global brands, production houses and agencies including
A studio built around the brief, not the other way around
Studio Ballena isn't a generalist photography studio that occasionally shoots food. The focus on tabletop work (food, drinks and products) is deliberate. Tabletop advertising has its own technical language, its own timing and its own demands around consistency and repeatability. Agencies and brands that bring complex briefs don't have to start from scratch: the studio knows how agency workflows run, what creative directors are after, and what a shoot day really looks like.
That seriousness about craft comes with room to play. Some of the best frames come from trying the version of a shot that probably shouldn't work: an unexpected liquid arc, an ingredient explosion that lands better than the brief, a lighting setup nobody had tried. Getting the timing and the motion control path right, and then seeing it come together in one frame or a five second slow motion clip, doesn't get old.
Based in Belgium, working across borders
Studio Ballena is at Regentiestraat 145, B-9473 Welle (Aalst), about 30 minutes by car from Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp. The central location makes it a practical base for productions drawing crew, stylists and clients from across the country, and easy to reach for international agencies and brand teams.
The studio also travels. Productions regularly take place on location, and Ernie, the CRX1440 motion control robot, fits through standard doors and elevators, runs on a standard 230 V supply and packs up for the road. Whether the shoot is in a Brussels agency studio, a brand facility in Amsterdam or a production house in Paris, the same precision comes along.
Work with Studio Ballena
Whether you're an agency looking for a specialist tabletop production partner, a brand team planning a product campaign, or a production company that needs a well equipped studio and motion control setup, tell us about your project, timeline and budget.