Women's Apparel · Location Campaign
Autumn Collection Lookbook
A full seasonal lookbook campaign for a womenswear brand, shot on location across Shanghai. We handled creative direction, location scouting, model coordination and post-production — delivering campaign-ready images for brand catalogues, e-commerce and wholesale channels.
The brief
A seasonal lookbook is a different job from listing photography, and buyers who confuse the two end up paying for the wrong images. Listing photography answers what is this product — cut, colour, fabric, fit, on white or on a ghost mannequin. A lookbook answers who wears this and when. It is what a wholesale buyer flips through before placing an autumn order, what a brand puts at the top of a collection page, and what a distributor forwards to their own retail accounts. The same garment needs both, and the lookbook is the one that has to exist before the season does.
That timing is the real constraint on a job like this. Autumn and winter orders are placed in the first half of the year, so the images have to be shot while the weather still looks nothing like the season being sold. Shooting on location in Shanghai is how this campaign solved it: the city has enough variety of architecture, light and planting that an autumn mood can be found rather than waited for, and all of it is within reach of the studio in a single day.
How it was shot
Location scouting came before anything else, and it was done for light, not for looks. A background that photographs well at four in the afternoon can be flat and grey at eleven in the morning, so each shortlisted spot was checked at the hour we intended to shoot it and the running order of the day was built around the sun rather than around convenience. We also keep readable branding, signage and anything obviously seasonal out of frame, so the brand can still run these images in two seasons’ time instead of retiring them with the campaign.
Styling was matched to the physical samples rather than to a mood board. Garments arrived at the studio before the shoot day, were steamed and fitted, and were sequenced so that wardrobe changes happened at the location we were already standing in. Each look was covered three ways: a clean full-length frame that shows the whole silhouette, a three-quarter frame that reads on a phone, and movement frames that show how the garment behaves when the wearer walks. The first two sell; the third is what makes a lookbook look like a brand instead of a catalogue.
In post-production, colour is matched back to the physical garment under controlled light, not corrected by eye on a screen. That matters more on a lookbook than anywhere else, because location daylight shifts between frames and a coat that drifts half a shade across a spread is the fastest way to make a collection look cheap. Two rounds of revisions are included, and final files are delivered in the crops the brand actually needs — wide for banners, square for feeds, tall for catalogue pages — so nothing has to be re-cropped downstream.
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
What happens if it rains on the shoot day?
We hold the studio as a fallback and we agree the cut-off in advance, usually the evening before. Location work is the one part of a campaign that weather can genuinely stop, so the honest answer is that the date moves rather than the quality dropping. There is no rescheduling fee for weather; what does cost money is a model day that has already been booked, which is why the call is made the night before and not on the morning.
Can you shoot a lookbook and the listing images on the same visit?
Yes, and it is usually the cheapest way to get both. The garments are already at the studio, already fitted and already steamed, so adding a white-background or ghost-mannequin pass only costs the per-image rate rather than another production. Those rates are published per image, so you can price the combination yourself before you ask us.
Do we get the right to use these images in paid advertising?
Full and unrestricted ownership of every delivered image transfers to you, worldwide and in perpetuity, with no separate fee for usage, media, territory or duration — marketplace listings, your own website, paid advertising, print, packaging and social media. The portrait release is signed in English, so your own legal or platform review has something to read, and we will sign your NDA before you send anything.
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.
Get a Free Quote