New Traditions with Lavazza
Ben Ashby
Last month I did some images with Lavazza and their Intenso dark roast coffee. The concept was to promote their Lavazza Holiday New Traditions campaign. Lavazza being founded on the very old tradition of coffee making in Turin, Italy has encouraged everyone this year to create new traditions.
The concept went through a lot of back and forth, but we ultimately decided to base them on a trio of events I did this fall season and ways we were tweaking them to create new traditions.
For the actual photos it was incredibly hard to create anything that seemed to fit. The new tradition that would be at the center of the series was the idea that my annual harvest dinner was moving from LA to New York City this year and we’d be serving Lavazza’s Intenso coffee at the end of the meal. In theory we’d shoot images of the twentyfive guests enjoying the dark coffee. The problem with this idea soon became way too obvious. The space for the dinner was lit with red light bulbs and candles. The idea of shooting any sort of photos quickly went out the window. The concept then evolved into showcasing natural light flatlays of the coffee , the Lavazza mug, and Fuji’s Instax images from the evening.
Luckily before going to New York I had created back up images that had doubled as invitations that went out to all of the dinner guests. With the invite images I wanted to create a scenic staged fall moment along my lake in Beaver Dam. The Lavazza coffee would be the centerpiece and the colors for the accessories would pull from the Lavazza packaging. I used vintage elements to continue with pieces I knew I’d be using on the dinner table. I wanted to use elements from my hometown and my family to go along with Lavazza’s tradition of handcrafted coffee since the late 1800’s. Lavazza is four generations deep into creating top quality coffee and a coffee culture that encourages a dedication to quality and excellence.
