Abstract compositions and flavour landscapes for Maison Macolat
Client: Maison Macolat
Agency: Absintt
Services: Full photo production including food styling
Delivered: 7 composite images across the two concepts, including the full nine tile Instagram grid composition
Year: 2020
The brief
Maison Macolat is a Belgian brand producing chocolate covered macadamia nuts, each flavour tied to a travel inspired story.
Creative agency Absintt came to us with a brief for two distinct visual concepts, both rooted in the brand's sense of adventure, flavour and a certain playful quirkiness.
Concept 1 called for an abstract, top view composition built from the product and its ingredients, designed to work both as a single square image and as a split nine grid post for Instagram.
Concept 2 took a more narrative approach: a separate landscape image for each flavour, constructed from chocolate shapes and raw ingredients as a visual nod to the brand's travel storyline.
The challenge
The nine grid format for Concept 1 introduced a real compositional challenge. The full image had to work as a single cohesive composition, but every individual tile within it also needed to stand on its own: each one centred on a full or cut open Macolat surrounded by its corresponding flavour ingredients.
Getting that balance right meant the overall composition couldn't be designed freely; it had to be built around a strict underlying grid structure from the very start.
For Concept 2, the challenge was constructing convincing landscape scenes entirely from edible materials. Shapes were formed from raw chocolate, yogurt, cocoa powder and other ingredients. Everything had to be handcrafted and look visually precise while still feeling organic and appetising.
Both concepts required shooting a large number of individual elements separately, all of which would be brought together in composite post production.
How we made it
Pre-production was the foundation of this project.
With two conceptually very different briefs to execute and a large number of individual elements to shoot for composite assembly, thorough planning was essential before a single camera was picked up.
Our full team worked through the brief together, building a detailed shot list for every element that would eventually be needed across all 7 final images.
During the production phase, the food stylist prepared all ingredients and constructed the required shapes (caramel triangles, chocolate forms, powdered elements), while the best individual products were carefully selected for hero shots.
We worked through the overall compositions first, then moved into detailed element shooting. Importantly, we began assembling rough composites during the shoot itself, which gave us a real time view of which elements were working and flagged anything that still needed to be captured before we wrapped.
Final compositing and retouching brought all the elements together into the polished, layered images the agency and client had briefed.
The result
The final deliverables comprised 7 composite images across the two concepts, including the full nine tile Instagram grid composition for Concept 1 and the individual flavour landscapes for Concept 2.
A selection of the finished images is shown below.
More food and drinks work in the portfolio.
Behind the scenes
These behind the scenes images give a sense of how the shoot was set up and how the individual elements were captured before going into compositing.
The gap between what you see on set and the finished image is where the real production work happens, and this project had a lot of it.
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