Ted + Chelsea

After a decade of shooting food and packaging for some of the biggest brands in the world, here’s what I know for sure — getting it right is everything. Swipe to see the 5 things I bring to every packaging project. 👉

So excited to have this image featured on the cover of Spring Food Issue! 🍊💫

This image was a result of Chelsea and I wanting to create some personal work in the studio. Inspired by the winter citrus season and the anticipation of spring, we dedicated a few weeks to brainstorming and mood boarding. Ultimately it took us a few days in the studio trying different compositions before we landed on this image.

We sourced several real citrus trees from Florida to ensure we had a variety of branches and leaves to play with on set. After finding our hero branch we used a soft glowing light source to enhance the color and texture of the oranges and used silver cards to reflect and highlight the natural shine of the leaves.

We were inspired by the style and colors of vintage botanical illustrations often found in encyclopedias and wanted to emulate that feeling through the beige background and delicate styling.  

We knew we wanted a perfect citrus flower in the image but they proved very difficult to source even with ordering live trees. In the end, we rented a model from a fantastic model maker in England, . We frequently rent other fruits from them for our commercial shoots.

Thank you for the feature !