Case studies

Selected Work

A few projects worth talking about.

4 projects

The Sun card from the Tarot of Life on marigold and cyan paper
The Lovers card from the Tarot of Life

Mariah Oller Studio

Shooting the Tarot of Life deck

Hand-illustrated tarot deck · Mexico City

Mariah is a cell biologist turned tarot artist working out of Mexico City. Her hand-illustrated Tarot of Life deck funded on Kickstarter in a week, got named to the TODAY Show’s beginner-deck list, ran in Oprah Daily and Bustle, and ended up in the Library of Congress’s permanent collection. By the time the cards reached me they were already the most interesting thing in any room.

Which is the whole point of the shoot: when the artwork is that strong, the photography’s job is to stay out of its way. Each card sits on saturated paper pulled from its own palette, lit flat and even so the illustration reads clean to the edges. No props, no styling — just the card, the color, and enough contrast to let the linework carry it.

Tall brown-glazed vessel by gabmary with grooved lines and an almond-shaped opening through its upper half, standing on a round crackle-glazed disc; light from the left throws a long shadow across a pale lilac backdrop
Tapered, angular vessel by gabmary with a curved rim: rust-pink glaze dotted with dimples and small holes near the top, crackled white below with pink spirals, zigzags and circles; hard shadow to the right with a bright spot inside it, on a pink backdrop

gabmary

Hard light on gabmary ceramics

Handmade ceramics · Cuenca, Ecuador

María del Pilar is an artisan here in Cuenca, 26 years into the craft. Along the way she has explored candle-making, papier-mâché, crochet and knitting, wet felting and other techniques. Clay only arrived three years ago, through an online workshop, and has become a central part of her work. The name gabmary puts together her daughter’s name, Gabriela, and her own, María. Nature is her main source of inspiration, but she interprets its forms rather than copying them.

She’d like people to know more about what’s behind a finished piece, including how often she accepts that something didn’t come out as expected and starts again. “Each stage leaves a mark and is part of the piece’s story,” she says. I photographed a set of her pieces, and these are two of my favorites. Hard light from the left picks out the grooves and the crackled glaze; on the tapered piece, it gets through and leaves a bright spot in the shadow. More of her work is at @artegabmary.

Firebelly Farms hot sauce hero shot with peppers
Firebelly Farms flat-lay with fresh peppers

Firebelly Farms

Hot sauce hero shots & flat-lays

Small-batch hot sauce · Charlotte, NC

Firebelly came to me before they had a clear visual identity. They needed clean shots of the bottles, but anything generic was going to read like every other small-batch hot sauce on the shelf.

The peppers ended up doing the work. Using their own ingredients as props meant the line had a visual signature built in from their own product, not borrowed from a stock playbook. The hero shot is still in use on their site years later. The flat-lay became their main background.

Silvia Jane fan earrings on pink-circle composition
Silvia Jane flower earrings on split pink background

Silvia Jane

Earring shots for a seasonal release

Handmade jewelry · Charlotte, NC

Silvia Jane is a small Charlotte jewelry brand. The maker is active in advocacy for kids with special needs — I liked the ethos and the work is genuinely good. She reached out about a new seasonal drop: handmade pieces, mostly white and pale-toned, that needed product shots before launch.

The jewelry itself was understated enough that any complex setup would have buried it. So the approach went the other way: each piece sits as negative space inside a saturated paper backdrop. The color carries the frame; the jewelry stays quiet on top.

Working on something? Tell me about it.

Before I say yes, I look at the products and the brand and see if I can come up with an idea for the shoot.

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