There's a new dispensary in Hyattsville MD, Story of Maryland to be precise. I was contracted by their marketing dept to do some photography and marketing for the store, so I came up with a gameplan to make a good introduction by helping to tell Story of Maryland's - story (so to speak).
The interior is a pleasing minimal vibe with some nice noir accents; unfinished exposed black ceiling, graphic red block fonts, dark wood cabinets and semi finished cement floor etc - very nice, you don't see this level of design detail concept in many dispensaries:
Story of Maryland has several in-house brands as they are also a licensed MD cultivator, here is their cannabis brand Old School:
This is their elite - top cannabis brand: Scratch - presumably a cultural nod to the streets, b-boy and DJ culture zooming.
And here is Bones Cannabis Brand, this is their pre-roll brand, unfortunately they did not have any product to photograph but I did get a nice few shots of the interior brand design, here's an example:
I wanted to get some lifestyle shots of the crew in action, working and helping patients etc, but the time we had allotted for these type of shots no customers came in, so I took a few shots of the staff talking to me about their jobs and these came out cool, here's one:
I set up a small three point Rembrandt style portrait lighting area in the rear area, the main floor is medium sized but kind of tight with all the retail furniture and design elements. I wanted to capture the spirit of the staff and be on-brand cool, low key dark and moody while also highlighting each staff members favorite product, great for marketing etc:
Here's a 30 second video clip I made using the content from this shoot:
After cycling through the entire staff, I tore down and on the way out took this shot of the front exterior, it was a super sunny day:
I was there from 10am till about 2pm and was able to capture all the content I needed in this half day mobile studio and marketing session. We might be doing a video of the store with staff members talking on camera, a customer testimonial, music and b-roll of the store, so stay tuned fellow connoisseurs.