Photo & Video

Prior to my employment at West Chester Protective Gear, product photography was restricted to a small pop-up light box placed inside a closet with only a pair of side fills and an overhead for lighting. For the most part, product photography was set up to only be able to photograph gloves. Apparel and other photography was outsourced to studio photographers or just not done.

West Chester has some of the largest retail customers in the safety apparel business, such as Lowe's, The Home Depot, Amazon, Walmart, Meijer, Tractor Supply Company, and others. Many of these retailers continue to up their game in a competitive environment by requiring more marketing material for the products that they carry. Much of the new marketing content requirements are for additional product photography, which is my responsibility at West Chester.

I was tasked with the dual task of meeting these additional photography requirements and expanding the company's internal capabilities to be able to photograph products larger than gloves, such as an entire new line of safety apparel which included safety vests, t-shirts, jackets, and rainwear. In order to fulfill what I was tasked with, I had to plan out a space for a new photography studio, spec out the items needed to create this new studio, and submit those items for budgetary approval.

Since the West Chester product line greatly expanded along with the additional photography capabilities and the new requirements from retail customers, it became necessary for me to develop and implement a new process for product photography requests along with better file organization for these photos. Standardized options for gloves and apparel were shown on the new Photography Request Form while still allowing for flexibility if other options were needed. Requirements like a unique identifier and a standardized file naming convention for each photographed product made archive searches more usable. Basic time estimates and a definitive menu of options created transparency for photography projects to help produce a better workflow for the whole team.