BVLGARI Cafe at Omotesando

"Surprise! Surprise!" was my reaction when I came up the escalator to check out the new Bulgari cafe which just opened this month on Omotesando, Tokyo. Along the wall leading to the entrance of the cafe, were the chocolate photos I took for their catalogue except they were big, very big. I've never seen my pictures blown up that big, and decorating a very prestigious brand name. My mother would've been very proud if she was still alive.

I always thought you had to shoot 8x10 or medium format digital for images to withstand an enlargement of this size. But these were shot with a 12 mega pixel Nikon d2X, and the enlarged images look great. Well, I certainly learned something new there.

shooting for BVLGARI

Last month I was contacted by the art buyer at Bulgari in Rome to shoot some pictures of their new line of chocolate for a brochure to be distributed at the new Bulgari Cafe and Chocolatier in Tokyo. Needless to say, shooting directly for the brand requires more attention to the details than say, shooting for an editorial article about the chocolates. So, after many international phone calls talking to the art director, and trying to understand exactly what is required, I set up a studio in one of their conference rooms at the Tokyo office. I work mostly on location these days since letting go of my photo studio five years ago. Not having my own studio allows me to work more efficiently to get the most out of the location, so that's not too bad. And as you can see from the finished brochure above, I got the job done and the folks at Bulgari were very happy.

One of the interesting things I noted during this shoot is that, the chocolates look great to the eye but when it's blown up to 100% size on the computer, you see all kinds of mar and lint on the surface that needs to be cleaned up before you can say "yummy."