Stroman Studios Brand Refresh Session in Columbia, SC

In Her Luxe Era

Stefanie owns Stroman Studios Calligraphy, a calligraphy business offering custom wedding day signage rentals as well as on-site engraving for luxury brands. We had the opportunity to work with Stef in 2023 for her initial brand photos, and quickly became big fans of hers, both as a person and as a fellow small business owner. So we were thrilled to get to collaborate with her again this summer on a Brand Refresh Session!

The goals for this refresh session were to give Stroman Studios Calligraphy a more luxe, elevated feel overall, using an editorial approach to the imagery. Stefanie’s matured as a person and so has her business, so her imagery needed to reflect that.

Since we already know Stefanie’s brand and business, we didn’t have the normal prep time of researching and digging into the brand like we would with a new client. But we still had some homework to do. This session would take place where Stefanie lives in Columbia, SC, so we decided to meet with her a couple of weeks before our planned shoot date so that we could do some location scouting there. She already had a few places in mind, so we were able to check out those locations and narrow it down to the two that would best fit the looks she wanted. Pro tip: laying eyes on the spaces in advance was really helpful in creating our shot list and shoot day timeline. Highly recommend location scouting in advance!

We began the day at Lazy Daisy Coffee Co., a brand new coffee shop in Forest Acres that had literally just opened the day before. It was packed with patrons, but Lori Ellen and I arrived early and snagged a couple of tables to ensure we had different scenes to shoot. The outdoor patio was perfect, the indoor aesthetics were just right, and it was a great way to showcase Stef’s true life working on the go. We worked around the customers, shot quickly, and got exactly what we needed from that location in about 30-45 minutes. You’d never know from the images just how crowded that little coffee shop was that day!

From there, we went to Central Energy, a converted warehouse turned weddings and events space that was filled with gorgeous natural light and just the right style. It actually felt like we were in a natural light photo studio! Everything about it was perfectly aligned with the minimal luxe vibes we were going for, and Stef set the place on fire in all the best ways.