In this post I want to shine a light on a very important part of Cinelooks. Without them it would have been a lot harder to get things started.

The photography you see all over this site, we actually didn’t shoot any of this.

Chonastock has been amazing in granting us a license for commercial use of their stock photography. Normally their catalog is limited to non-commercial share-alike use only.

One thing that was clear right from the start was: “If we shoot all our footage we’ll never get this done [in a sensible time frame]“. Also hiring actors, crew, renting equipment would have meant a significant upfront investment.

The search for the perfect imagery

As a result of this, I and a few close friends scoured the web for other viable options. If you’ve ever had to deal with stock photography you probably know the hassles involved and what you’re getting. Either some very generic looking stuff for advertising that can hardly stand on its own, or some over the top work that is completely unusable.

No compromise, ever.

The other thing that was out of question is settle for mediocrity. Our customers do the best they can to tell their story. We’d betray their trust in us if we did anything but our best at no compromise.

With Chonastock we finally found a partner that produces cinematic stock images that tell a story. The images aren’t treated a lot and we neutralize the treatment before working on the looks. This is the closes you get to a real-world shoot.

The people behind our imagery

Charis Sutton and Ona Victoria Okon are the two Australian costume designers, prop makers, models and photographers behind Chonastock.

We found them almost by accident after a few of their images were featured on Deviant Art. And to be honest I was close to calling off the search and raising money for proper shoots based on actual scripts.

Thanks to Chonastock we didn’t have to decide between quality and delivery.

And going out for a few weeks shooting doesn’t only cost money it also means that we can’t work on the store and all that’s behind it during this time.