Chocolate & confectionery
Photo and video for chocolate and confectionery brands
Chocolate is an unforgiving product in front of a camera. It marks, it blooms, it softens, and a praline that looked perfect in the box shows every fingerprint at full size. Studio Ballena photographs and films chocolate, sweets and confectionery in its own studio in Welle, Belgium: packshots, styled images and video, for packaging, webshops, campaigns and social.
The work below is a selection from fifteen years of chocolate and confectionery projects for Neuhaus, Barry Callebaut, Guylian and other brands in Belgium and Europe.
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Chocolate packshots
Clean, accurate images of every praline, bar, box and gift tin in a range, for webshops, catalogues, retailers and sales teams. A range is shot as one set, so a new product added next season sits next to the existing ones without standing out. More on how we work is on our packshots page.
Styled chocolate photography
The same products in a set: advertising photography for packaging, posters, seasonal campaigns and social. Easter, Christmas, Valentine and Mother's Day each ask for their own images, and the product often sits next to what goes into it, the hazelnut, the caramel, the fruit.
For the agency Absintt, we shot a series of chocolate covered macadamias for Maison Macolat, each flavour with its own ingredients.
Chocolate and confectionery video
Some things about chocolate only show when it moves: a bar that snaps, a filling that gives way, a box that opens. We film those in slow motion, and when a camera move has to repeat exactly, take after take, it runs on our motion control robot. See the video and motion work.
One studio for pack, web and campaign
Packshots, styled images and product video can come from the same shoot, with the same products on set. The images for the pack, the webshop and the campaign then look like one family, and the products only have to travel once.
Real chocolate, shot for real
We shoot the real product. The gloss on a praline, the edge of a broken bar and the grain of a filling are the details a generated image still gets slightly wrong, and people who buy chocolate notice. Our view on where AI fits in commercial photography, and where it does not is on the blog.
More food photography and video is on our food and drinks page. How a project runs, from brief to delivery, is on our photo and video production page.
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Chocolate photography and video questions
Can packshots and styled images be shot together?
Yes, when it's planned that way. The products are on set once, and the packshots, the styled images and any video are shot in the same days, each made for where it will run.
Do you shoot chocolate in the studio or on location?
In our studio in Welle, between Brussels and Ghent. Chocolate needs a cool, controlled room and time on set, and both are easier to give it there than on location. A delivery can unload straight into the studio.
Do you work with a food stylist?
Yes. Food styling is a service of its own, added whenever the brief needs it, and we work with stylists who know chocolate and confectionery.
Do you use AI for chocolate images?
No, the product in the image is the real product. Retouching cleans up what the camera sees, it does not replace it.
Planning a chocolate or confectionery shoot?
Tell us the range, the brief as it stands and when you need the images. We'll come back with how we'd plan the shoot.