A cupcake store is hardly the worst environment for taking photographs. These sugar dense, nutrient lacking cupcakes are conducive to permagrins from a cold hard sugar shock you’re vaulted into after sucking back three of these exceptionally designed cake chunks. I worked in a bakery when I was younger, I remember Day One. We were allowed to “test” everything to have adequate knowledge about the food. “Okay, sure.” I tried to keep from indulging, but
it wasn’t even a battle. That first day I remember stuffing down a Thundercat Birthday cake, Garlic Focaccia, and about five double chocolate muffins. I couldn’t help but have those old stomach memories resurge after eating a Red Velvet cupcake from Sweet Cupcakes. Thanks to the nice folks there who hooked us up with a variety pack, we were buzzing the entire shoot.

The toughest part of the day was the exterior shot. The store is located on School Street, a little valley of a street surrounded by big buildings in downtown Boston. The first step was knowing where the sun would be at any given part of the day. To help with that, I downloaded an app called LightTrac. It tells you the exact sun location, shadow length, and sunset time for any minute of the day. For this situation, the best option for an even exposure was to let the row of stores catch the shade. We waited until later in the day around 4pm. There were trickles of light reflecting from the other buildings, I thought it added a nice touch. We needed to photograph the entire store as well as the back offices and preparation area. The layout seemed perfectly made for efficiency and had plenty of space to carry out all necessary cupcake operations.

The interior was beautifully designed by Annsley Inteiors and the architect was Diane Lim. Click on the image to view it larger.

I triggered two off-camera flashes in these first two exterior shots.

Motion and foot traffic helped make the store more inviting.

They play old movies all day, pretty awesome.

The light colors helped the light bounce around well.