First published in 2017 under Wisz Co., now Chasing Creative. Updated August 2026 with our ongoing work for Kona Coffee and Tea Company.
We have been photographing Kona Coffee and Tea Company since 2017 — the farm, the roastery, the packaging and the coffee shop on the Big Island. That work has run from a first week on the island through to a national magazine cover. This page collects it, and what we have learned about photographing a coffee brand end to end.
What we shoot for a coffee brand
Coffee is one of the few categories where the whole supply chain is photogenic and, more importantly, sellable. A bag of beans on a white background is a commodity. The same bag, shot beside the trees it came from, is a story a customer will pay more for.
A full coffee brand shoot usually covers five things:
- The farm — the trees, the cherries, the pickers, the land. This is the origin story, and it is the material most coffee brands are missing.
- Production and roasting — process shots that prove craft rather than claim it.
- Packaging and product — clean, repeatable frames built for ecommerce, wholesale decks and Amazon listings.
- The storefront and the people — the shop, the staff, the regulars. This is what makes a brand feel local rather than industrial.
- Lifestyle and UGC — vertical, native-feeling content for social and paid.
Shooting all five on one trip is what makes it economical. Most brands book a product shoot, then six months later realise they need origin content and cannot get back to the farm.
The films
[CONFIRM: one line describing this first video — what it covers and roughly when it was shot.]
[CONFIRM: one line describing this second video.]
The 2017 shoot
The original post, as published.
Kona Coffee and Tea Company is a beautiful and vibrant company. From it’s farmland down to the coffee shop. You can smell the sea scent wisp up from the coast on their wrap around outdoor space. It is an escape from the daily grind and offers you a friend at the counter. Their coffee is one of a kind.
Recently we worked with Kona Coffee and Tea Company on a trip to Kona, Hawaii. We learned about the farm, production, and coffee shop.
Within the last few months they introduced new branding to celebrate the twenty years they have been in business. We were swooning over the new packaging and excitement around the shop.
As a family company and calling its all hands on deck with the sole desire to grow and serve great coffee. Remembering, to have fun while working, we quickly felt apart of the team for our week on the Island.
Below are a few images that barley scratch the surface of what this group of coffee freaks are doing but we wanted to share our experience and invite you to try their coffee for yourself.
Thanks again for taking the time to see what we are up to and remember: You. Are. Loved.
—Blake and Jasmine Wisz
The 2018 Edible Hawaiian Islands cover
The following year, our photograph ran on the cover of the 2018 Fall Issue of Edible Hawaiian Islands Magazine — a James Beard awarded print and digital publication distributed across the Hawaiian Islands. The issue features Kona Coffee and Tea Company.
As we wrote at the time:
Hawaii flows with creative, humble, and friendly people who share in common their care for the land and each other. It’s natural beauty speaks for itself with ocean spray breeze and sun kissed beaches. Their food is caught fresh and prepared with care. Plants and fruits grow vibrantly throughout the Island–coffee being exceptionally noteworthy.
The family and its employees can make one hell of a cup of coffee, but they also brew up authentic community with their customers, many of whom they consider Ohana. We spent an entire day shooting with the family, and it was clear they pour themselves into the business and one another.
We were privileged, honored, and thankful to have been the photographers for that year’s cover.
The work since
[CONFIRM: shoots after 2018 — which years and what each covered, e.g. packaging refresh, seasonal campaigns, wholesale collateral, web imagery. The two films above likely belong here; add dates.]
Why original photography beats stock for coffee
Stock coffee imagery is some of the most overused on the internet — partly, we will admit, because of our own work on Unsplash, which has been downloaded over 1.9 million times. That is exactly the problem for a brand: the same frames appear on hundreds of competing sites.
Original imagery does three things stock cannot. It shows your farm, your packaging and your people. It cannot be used by a competitor. And it carries provenance — the thing specialty coffee customers are actually buying. It is also the only kind of work that ends up on a magazine cover.
Planning a coffee or hospitality shoot
A few things worth knowing before booking:
- Shoot at harvest if origin matters. Empty trees photograph poorly and you cannot fix it in post.
- Bring packaging to the farm. Product-in-place shots are the highest-value frames and the easiest to miss.
- Budget for a full week on location. Light, weather and farm access rarely cooperate on a two-day schedule.
- Shoot verticals alongside horizontals. Retrofitting social crops from landscape frames wastes the best images.
- Shoot for print as well as web. Editorial placement is real and it needs resolution and headroom you cannot crop back in.
Work with us
We shoot food, coffee, hospitality and brand photography on location. See more food photography, brand work and travel photography, or get in touch to talk about a shoot.
To try the coffee, visit konacoffeeandtea.com.