Seattle-based photographer Cameron Karsten has built a strong relationship with Zillow Group. He has photographed projects from in-home walkthroughs to Santa’s Village for the Real-estate startup. As Zillow has expanded its need for imagery, Cameron has been ready to take on bigger and bigger projects.
In the past, Zillow has generally opted to use stock imagery for its annual reports. But, for the 2017 report they wanted to go with something more specialized, so they invited Cameron to submit a bid for a library of images. Cameron won the bid and got the chance to step out from behind the camera and take on some production responsibilities. He ended up scouting locations and casting the talent for the three-day shoot in addition to his role as the photographer. Cameron leveraged his personal network to fill the twelve casting spots across the three-day multi-location shoot. As is often the case, scheduling was the most difficult part of the casting process.
I ended up casting, location scouting and producing the project, which in the end was a great experience. It was an exhausting amount of work, but we conquered the final end goal and everything moved flawlessly. All in all, it was a wonderful project that produced a large printed report sent to all the shareholders, including the online report available to the public.
Cameron had worked on other projects for Zillow with several members of the production, including Creative Director Sabrina Fiander. The annual report design team was full of new faces, but it quickly became clear that everyone worked well together.
The shoot was a blast with a complete crew of familiar faces excited to be a part of a great project. As all shoots, we worked hard and pressed each other to push harder and do our best.
The reaction to the images has been immensely positive. The team at Zillow was pleased with the images delivered and plan to commission more custom imagery for their future reports.
Now that the report has been published, Cameron is already looking towards next year:
Hopefully a 2018 report with a couple production days added to it will nail all angles of Zillow Group’s outreach and diversity.
The complete report is available on the Zillow Group website.
Additional Credits:
Creative Director: Sabrina Fiander
Producer: Jill Snow
Associate Producer: Jillian Zieske
Brand Consultant: Bradley O’Neal
Brand Marketing Manager: Lindsey Bluher
Digital Tech: Judson Felder
Photo Assistants: Dominic Crowley, Delaney Brown
Art Director: Tim Teehan
Stylist: Lily Karsten
HMU: Zoe Hoffman
See more of Cameron at cameronkarsten.com!
And check out our other members on our Find Photographers page.
Cameron Karsten's Imaginarium 
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