Children's Swimwear · Studio Campaign
Kids Swimwear · Indoor Beach Campaign
A full creative campaign for a children’s swimwear brand, built entirely in our Shanghai studio. We designed and constructed a custom indoor beach set — complete with real sand, a mini pool, surfboard props and tropical plants — then shot a full range of swimwear with European child models in a true summer atmosphere.
The brief
Swimwear is ordered in winter. A buyer placing a summer range is signing off samples while it is cold outside, the catalogue has to be printed before spring, and the marketplace listings have to be live and indexed before the first warm weekend. Waiting for a real beach means missing the order window by a full season, which is why so much swimwear is sold on images that were obviously shot indoors against a plain backdrop — technically correct, commercially flat.
Building the beach instead removes three risks from the schedule at once: the season, the weather and the travel. It also solves the part of a children’s swimwear shoot that nobody mentions in the brief, which is the children. A built set indoors is warm, it is minutes from a changing area and a parent, and it can be paused for as long as a child needs without losing the light. On a real beach, every one of those things costs you shooting time.
How it was shot
The set was designed and constructed in our own Shanghai studio: a shallow pool with real water, decking and steps, surfboards and rings as props, real sand, and live tropical planting. The water and the planting are the two elements that cannot be faked. Water moves, splashes and catches light, and a child standing in it behaves completely differently from a child standing on a painted floor — you can see it in the frames. The planting gives the picture depth and something to go soft behind the subject, which is what stops an indoor set looking like a corner of a room.
The lighting was built to read as a bright summer day rather than as a studio, which for children’s swimwear means open and even rather than hard and dramatic. There is a commercial reason for that and not just an aesthetic one: swimwear sells on its print, and a hard shadow falling across a printed garment hides the thing the customer is buying. Keeping the light open across a whole range, on a set with white decking and water throwing light back up, is the part that takes time — and it is identical in every frame, which is what a buyer needs when the images end up side by side on a listing page.
A full range of swimwear was shot on European child models, with styling, fit pinning and colour matched back to the physical samples after the shoot. Prints are where swimwear retouching usually goes wrong: a repeating pattern stretched over a curved body is easy to distort when the garment is being cleaned up, and a print that does not match the sample is the fastest route to a returns problem. Two rounds of revisions are included, and the frames are delivered cropped for both marketplace listings and brand marketing, so nothing has to be re-cut later.
Behind the Scenes
Campaign Imagery
What a campaign like this costs
On-model work is booked by the studio day, because that is how the cost actually behaves: the model and the hair-and-make-up artist are a day rate whether you shoot eight looks or twenty. So the figure below is a day, and the per-look price is simply that day divided by a full one.
| Line item | Price |
|---|---|
| Photography and retouching — one studio day, up to 20 looks | US$2,600 per day, or US$130 per look |
| Each look beyond 20 on the same day | US$130 |
| Model, hair and make-up — one 8-hour day, cast in Shanghai | US$1,750–2,250, itemised on your quote |
| Set building, props or an outside location | At cost, quoted before we book |
A full 20-look day therefore lands between US$4,350 and US$4,850 all in — 80 to 120 retouched images, our studio, lighting and grip, the model, hair and make-up, styling, and the signed portrait release in English. Nothing is added to that afterwards. Finished images are delivered three working days after the shoot. The whole published list, including the volume ladder and the white-background and ghost-mannequin rates, is on our pricing page — you do not have to send an enquiry to see it.
Questions buyers ask about this kind of shoot
Can you shoot our summer range in winter?
Yes — that is the entire point of a built set, and this campaign was produced that way. Because the beach is indoors, the shoot date depends on when your samples arrive and when a suitable child model is available, not on the weather or the season. Plan on having the images in hand well before the catalogue deadline rather than racing it.
How do you handle shooting with children?
A parent or guardian is present throughout, we work in short bursts with real breaks, and the set is kept warm and close to a changing area. Practically, we also over-plan: the shot list is ordered so the most important garments are photographed while the child is freshest, and we budget more time per look than an adult shoot would need. The release is signed by the guardian, in English.
Do we have to pay for the set to be built again next time?
No, and this is worth asking us about before you assume a rebuild. Set elements we already own — sand, pool, props, planting — are reused, so a repeat campaign on the same set is mostly just studio and model time. What gets charged at cost is anything new that has to be bought or built for your specific look, and that figure is agreed with you before anything is purchased.
Where to go next
If what you need first is listing images rather than a campaign, ghost mannequin photography and flat lay photography are both published per piece, and we will shoot one piece free so you can judge the work before you order — three main angles plus the detail shots, 9 to 11 finished images, no watermark and no obligation. Sample shipping anywhere in China is on us. It covers still photography only, once, for a new client, and not highly reflective or transparent goods.
The rest of our campaign work is in the portfolio, product film and 3D animation are on the video production page, and the studio itself is described on our about page.
Planning a similar project?
Tell us about your products and we’ll prepare a production plan. Published prices are on our pricing page — no enquiry needed to see them.
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