Phoenix Photography Blog for tonic photo studios
Patrick is on the road, shooting at ILORI’s Beverly Hills location. He nabbed a few pics of the sights on his phone so he could share the experience with us back in Phoenix at the tonic studio hub.
Patrick Darby is heading back out on the road again, this time headed to Southern California and Las Vegas to shoot more stores for ILORI and Optical Shops of Aspen. Stay tuned for some sneak peeks and maybe a few photos from the road! We love road trips!
Patrick is back in our Phoenix studio for a while, in between the East Coast and West Coast legs of his Luxottica road trip. While he’s in town, we wanted to change gears and spend a little time on one of tonic’s specialties: cuisine photography. In particular, we want to focus on work we have done for AJ’s Fine Foods, a longtime local client here in the Phoenix area.
Valley residents are no doubt familiar with the upscale markets which are a part of the Basha’s family of stores. They have been a fixture in Phoenix, bringing a gourmet shopping experience to food and drink lovers for over 25 years. What most people don’t realize is that tonic photo dtudios has been the primary supplier of commercial food photography for AJ’s since the early 90′s.
We’re proud not only to work with a great local client, but to have such a longstanding relationship. The team at AJ’s relies on our large repertoire of capabilities to create eye-catching images for their marketing materials, both in-store and online. They know that Patrick and the tonic photo team are able to meet any challenge, from capturing stunning pour shots to staging large, styled sets.
One part of the AJ’s relationship we’re particularly proud of is our work for their annual Summer Wines promotion. Each year, AJ’s features select wines as their flavors of the summer and to translate those flavors into imagery, they turn to Patrick’s skills. It has been a fun challenge as summer rolls around each year, and the tonic staff has relished the challenge every time.
To see more images than the few highlighted here on the blog, head over to Tonic’s cuisine portfolio. Or, you can visit AJ’s website, where nearly all of the photography was generated by tonic photo studios.
As you read in our previous post, Patrick has been on the road shooting images for optical stores ILORI and Optical Shop of Aspen. He recently wrapped up the East Coast leg of his travels by visiting Optical Shop of Aspen’s East Hampton store. He’s had a fantastic trip which was complimented by great weather in New York. He nabbed some great shots of the city’s architecture, as well as completing photo shoots at the stores he visited.
The staff at Luxottica (the parent company of ILORI and Optical Shop of Aspen) has been a pleasure to work with, but the fun isn’t over yet. Patrick will be heading to the West Coast to visit more stores, so look for more photos of his adventures!
Take a look at sneak peeks of ILORI’s Soho store and Optical Shop of Aspen’s East Hampton location, and head over to our Facebook page to view more location photos, as well as those great architectural shots we mentioned.
Patrick is hitting the road this month! No, he’s not hitching a ride to find adventure on the highways or backpacking across Europe on $2 a day. Instead, this trip is much more luxurious. Throughout May, Patrick will be shooting images for high-end optical retailers ILORI and Optical Shop of Aspen, which are part of Luxottica Group’s global retail presence. The entire Tonic staff is thrilled to be a part of this project and working with Luxottica has been a pleasure for everyone.
Patrick has already traveled to ILORI’s store in Soho and during the remainder of the month, he will be visiting stores in East Hampton, Las Vegas, Rodeo Drive and Newport Beach to capture images which highlight each store’s exterior architecture and interior design. It’s an excellent opportunity for Tonic to demonstrate its chops in creating beautiful photos of beautiful locations.
An icon of New York City
The Soho photo shoot just wrapped up and Patrick is working on editing the images now. We’ll be bringing you highlights from each leg of the road trip, but just to whet your appetite we’ve included one quintessentially New York image Patrick grabbed while he was in the city. Granted, it’s not a part of the ILORI store shoot, but Patrick’s an architecture photographer. Did you really think he wasn’t going to get a few images of New York’s grandeur while he was there?
Keep watching the blog for stories of Patrick’s travels!
ACO Polymer Products makes drains and they called on Tonic to shoot a wide range of images for them. Before you think “That was probably difficult, because it’s hard to make drains exciting,” take a look at the diversity of ACO’s products, especially the design and style of their QuARTz line. They produce some truly beautiful lifestyle products as well as being the leaders in commercial and modular trench drains.
ACO is a top-notch company and we at Tonic were humbled to be chosen by them to photograph a wide range of images. Their needs fully exercised our range of expertise in product, architecture and lifestyle photography. The team at ACO needed not only in-studio product photography, but many location photos as well. Thanks to our bandwidth and versatility, we were able to get the images quickly and with our signature creative touch.
For this assignment, we traveled to ACO’s facility in Casa Grande, AZ (not exactly close to our Phoenix studio) to capture images of the building, and to downtown Phoenix (much closer) to showcase their trench drains in place along the METRO light rail line. This is where Patrick dug deep to find a creative way to shoot the drains next to a light rail train in motion, all without getting arrested or run over. How did he do it? Well, he refuses to give up his secret, but it may have involved some Spider-Man-style acrobatics.
Talking about the work we did with ACO can only communicate so much. Have a look at some of the images we created for ACO, and follow the links below to see our images in use on ACO’s site. We hope they convey how proud we are to be a creative solution provider for ACO Polymer Products.
One of our recent clients here at Tonic Photo Studios is Massage Envy, who came to us through our longtime partner The Lavidge Company. Why did Lavidge turn to us? Because they knew we had both the skill and the space to meet Massage Envy’s photographic needs.
In order to get the photos we wanted, we started by building a facsimile of a Massage Envy therapy room. Remember how Patrick mentioned that running Tonic involves a lot of creative problem solving? That extends to building a massage therapy room and other smaller sets inside our 8,000 square foot facility. Fortunately, Massage Envy’s corporate specifications dictated how our therapy room should look, but it was up to us to make it happen.
Once the sets were ready to go, we brought in Massage Envy staff and a large talent pool supplied by the good people at Garth Williams Casting. 
We had quite a few people filling up the studio, but thanks to the skill of the Tonic staff, we were able to work through numerous settings in a short amount of time. That’s another reason Lavidge Company often turns to us: we can quickly crank out high quality content.
The end result of our work: a satisfied customer and a partner who was reminded why they turn to Tonic Photo Studios when they need great results.
Take a look at a few more behind-the-scenes photos to get a feel for how we made the Massage Envy photos happen!
Tonic Photo Studios was recently chosen by Mayor Phil Gordon, of the city of Phoenix, to help him with his image. And we were only too happy to oblige!
In lieu of his upcoming State of the City Address, we set up a session in our photo studio and worked with the Mayor to create a series of images that showcase his leadership qualities.
An announcement of the mayor's State of the City address, featuring photography by Tonic Photo Studios
Above is one of our final shots, in context of an email release regarding the upcoming event.
We feel like the project was an overwhelming success, helping this public figure create the perfect imagery and style.
Here at Tonic Photo Studios, we love to help individuals and company’s make the best impression with their photography. If you’re in need of a creative solution for your image, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can see our portfolio of work as well as our contact information on our website at www.tonicphotostudios.com.
Fry’s Marketplace
I can’t think of any one single client that has changed Tonic and contributed toward as much growth as Fry’s Marketplace. TPS is fortunate to have had this partnership for about 4 years now and has enjoyed every bit of it. Fry’s keeps us on our toes as we are constantly shooting a variety of different subject matter from styled food shots to soft and hard goods to architecture and portraiture. They cover the gamut with and continue to challenge us on a daily basis.
Currently we are working on the production of imagery for over 300 semi truck wraps.
Two of the many truck wraps we have completed for Fry's
Fox Restaurant Concepts
It’s been a great experience working for Fox Restaurant Concepts for the past three years or so. I can’t go on enough about how much respect I have for the company and the strength and innovation within their brand. We have enjoyed the privilege of shooting a variety of work for Fox including Architecture and Food and Beverage and are always excited about the next project. Recently we shot interiors, exteriors and menu items for True Food Kitchen at the Biltmore. I returned to the restaurant just the other day, not two months into the opening of the place, and it was absolutely packed with lines out the door (even in this economy). Seems Sam really has things figured out and that almost everything he touches turns to gold. We wish him the best of luck moving forward and appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the brand.
True Food Kitchen at the Biltmore Shopping Plaza
