14
January
2016
How do you find the right photo to capture your brand, to tell its story?
Web designers will show you stock images, and while these may come close, they often lack that personal feel. Professional photographers possess the skills, but may not completely understand your vision.
This is the story of RockPaperCoffee and how we were able to tell it – in the end by change, through our own images.
In the fall of 2015, we needed banner images for our website. After working with web designers and photographers, we felt the results didn't fit with our vision. Coincidentally, a last minute contract around that time had me travelling through the vast prairies, mere miles from SunnyDale Farm, future home of RockPaperCoffee. One of the members of SunnyDale Farm had told me about an abandoned farmstead on a corner of their land. After a few miles of driving down gravel roads I happened to find it. It was partially falling down and the field had been worked almost to its front door.
The wind cut through me as I walked past the siding that was coming off, revealing its original log construction underneath. I crawled through the living room window and entered the kitchen. Nothing remained but peeling layers of wall paper and evidence that there were once shelves. Even the floor was gone and in its place was a worn-down dirt pit, trampled with hoof prints and an opening from under the cement foundation where the farm animals had once gotten in.
That is when something caught my eye. In the centre of the trampled earth, slightly buried, was a cup. I reached down, not expecting it to be in one piece. It was. I inspected it and used my scarf to give it a gentle cleaning. It was in perfect shape – not even a scratch or chip on it. I placed the cup down and started taking photographs. On that cold fall day, only a few days after our first snowfall, and right at a time I was looking for inspiration, the RockPaperCoffee cup was born. These are the photos that tell the beginning of our story.
