Capturing the Joy of a Volkswagon Flower Truck Business: A Branding Journey
When you think of a Volkswagen (VW) truck, what comes to mind? For many, it evokes a sense of nostalgia, freedom, and a laid-back spirit. Now, imagine that iconic van transformed into a mobile flower truck with a build your own bouquet bar, bursting with colors, creativity, and the sweet scent of joy. That's exactly the vision we brought to life with a branding photoshoot for Sweet Pea the Flower Truck. The goal was simple yet powerful: to create a visual identity that perfectly captured the essence of this unique business.
In this blog post, I’m taking you behind the scenes of how we planned, styled, and executed a full website and brand identity rebrand, including a branding photoshoot for Sweet Pea. Whether you’re a business owner looking to elevate your brand or a photographer aiming to take on a similar project, I’ve got a couple tips and insights you can use!
Step 1: Defining the Brand’s Essence
Before the brand photoshoot, I actually spent a lot of time talking to the owner of Sweet Pea the Flower Truck - Kristina - to discuss what she wanted customers to see and feel when they saw her website and brand photos. We were pretty much doing an overhaul of her website which was an incredible starting point that brought her to where she was as #1 on Google when searching Bay Area flower truck. Her search engine standing was already great, so what we were aiming for was creating a strong visual identity with brand colors, fonts, and photos.
For Kristina, her flower truck business was built out of a dream of one day having a job with flowers, but nothing ever feeling right until she saw a picture of a vintage VW filled with flowers. Her main goal is to bring joy, kindness, peace, and love to everyone — and she felt there was no better way to do it than in a VW filled with beautiful flowers. As we discussed what she wanted her brand’s visual identity to be, it was clear that she wanted it to give an essence of whimsy, joy, nature, and vintage charm. We had to reflect all of this in the photos to ensure that every shot told a cohesive story.
Key questions we discussed were:
Who is your ideal customer? Understanding her target audience helped us pick the right vibe.
What values does your brand stand for? Love, joy, kindness, peace, whimsy, nature, and vintage charm are what came to mind.
What do you want customers to feel when they see your brand and photos? Happy, love, joy and peace were again the top contenders.
BRANDING PALETTE FOR SWEET PEA THE FLOWER TRUCK
For shortness sake of this blog post, I will keep it limited on diving into branding colors and fonts as well as search engine optimization for building a whole website. You can read my blog on 11 Tips for Designing Your Own Website (Including SEO) as well as a whole separate blog on 3 Tips for How to Design Your Website with Search Engine Optimization Strategies to dive deeper into those topics.
Long story short, we chose colors that felt more muted to keep the vintage charm and whimsy vibes, and two fonts that would work cohesively for a website with title versus body fonts but also portrayed whimsy and a little bit of a flowery, down-to-earth, and genuine feel. This was the starting palette we were working with alongside a couple photos she already had for her business:
Step 2: Photography - Location and Setup
The beauty of a VW truck is that it’s both a vehicle and a mobile canvas for creativity. Choosing a location for the shoot was essential to create the right mood.
Location Choice:
Kristina wanted something that highlighted the flowers, not something super urban, and a place that felt like the VW bus felt at home but still stood out. We also wanted to make sure timing would work well for lighting including the angle we would be photographing at. Where did we feel like fit the bill?
Sunol Regional Wilderness Park in Sunol, California!
Styling the VW:
The bus itself was the star of the shoot, with its vintage pastel exterior serving as the perfect canvas. Kristina came to the shoot fully prepared with fresh flowers and greenery in her classic bouquet bar set-up, a great representation of her most common set-up for pop-ups and private events. Something we also took into account was that she offers more than just bouquet bars at downtown locations; she offers private events where she teaches how to make wreaths, flower crowns, and bouquets. She also offers a portable flower bar without the truck. I wanted to make sure we captured photos that would help amplify her brand in all that she offered not just on social media, but also her website, business cards, stickers, and more.
Step 3: Creating the Right Mood
To do this, I snagged a variety of shots that would function for all those brand items: website photos, stickers, an updated business card, and definitely social media.
That included:
Close-ups: Shots of Kristina’s hands arranging flowers, picking out bouquets, and the intricate details of the flowers themselves. These created an intimate connection with the viewer and showcased the quality and care behind the business.
Wide Shots: To emphasize the vintage charm of the VW and its surroundings, we took wide-angle shots to show the bus in all its glory amidst the Sunol Regional Wilderness hills.
Multiple angles: When doing a branding shoot as a photographer, you absolutely need to make sure to get multiple angles of the same item. A client wants to be able to use all the photos you give them without feeling like they are posting the same photo every day or week on Instagram because the photos look so similar.
Horizontal vs vertical photos: Another crucial thing to remember WHILE taking the photos is “how is the client going to use the photos?”. This is important to ask ahead of time so you can prep what lenses to bring and think ahead of time how and where you will be shooting the different orientations.
Headshots of Kristina with the bus: These are absolutely staple for self-owned businesses nowadays because a lot of people choose to continue to support a brand or company for the face behind the brand. Having updated business headshots, (and in this case for Kristina they were shots with Sweet Pea), is a great way to help people feel personally connected with a brand.
Step 4: Playing with Color and Composition
Color is a crucial part of branding, and the VW flower truck’s aesthetic was built on a more muted palette. From the pastel shades of the truck to the rich, bold colors of the flowers, I composed shots to highlight the contrast and harmony.
I made sure to:
Match the color scheme: The pastel shades of the bus (soft, muted teal blue) paired beautifully with the bright flowers. This cohesive color palette helped communicate a sense of freshness.
Focus on details: The type of flowers, the Sweet Pea logo on the side of the truck, and the weathered charm of the bus were all carefully captured to evoke a sense of nostalgia and craftsmanship.
Balance the composition: Each shot was framed to emphasize a different part of the truck’s offerings, some keeping the VW as the focal point, and others keeping Kristina or the flowers themselves the focal point.
Step 5: Showcasing the Brand’s Unique Offerings
The goal of the photoshoot wasn’t just to capture a beautiful vehicle—it was to tell the story of the whole business and its offerings. The photos had to communicate:
Mobile service: The idea that the flower truck brings flowers to the people.
Personal connection with customers: Since this was a closed photoshoot and just Kristina was featured, I chose to make sure to get photos of her actively making bouquets as well as smiling into the camera while doing it (both natural and candid shots).
Step 6: Post-Processing and Final Touches
After the shoot, the magic of post-processing began. The goal was to enhance the natural colors but still overall giving the truck and flowers a soft, muted but still colorful feel.
LESSONS I LEARNED:
I have to say in full transparency, working with two different types of camera bodies (Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon R6 Mark II) made some of the post-processing incredibly time-consuming since I had to color grade the shots from both cameras differently. I also wish I had time-synced my two camera bodies since the timing of the shots changed color based on where the sun was at since we shot at golden hour. It would have been easier editing the photos if they were already time-synced for sure. Lessons learned!
Cropping and Final Touches:
For social media and marketing materials, I provided Kristina with a lot of cropped versions but also full uncropped so that she could utilize the photos in different formats—square/4x5 for Instagram, wide for website banners, and portrait for flyers. This made sure the content could be repurposed effectively across various platforms. That also included leaving negative space in some photos so that she could create designs over photos for her business. Since I was the one also redesigning her website, we had talked extensively about types of photos she might want as a website banner versus for the about me page, and so on. That really helped when I was also doing the post-processing because I could plug a photo into her website to test the feel and how it worked with her website space.
Here is what her brand palette looked like with one main photo pulling in all the colors:
The Final Result: A Cohesive Brand Story
The brand identity, palette, and photos we created didn’t just showcase a VW truck selling flowers—they told a story of a kind, self-owned and woman-owned small business whose purpose is to spread joy through flowers. Each image was crafted to draw in the viewer, spark their curiosity, and encourage them to engage with the flower truck brand.
By the end of the shoot, we had a large gallery of images that not only visually represented the business but also communicated its personality through social media and a fully redesigned website.
Conclusion: More Than Just a Photoshoot
A branding photoshoot isn’t just about taking pretty pictures; it’s about creating visuals that reflect your business’s personality, mission, and values. For Sweet Pea the Flower Truck, the photoshoot was an opportunity to share its unique offerings and put a face to the brand as well. To learn more about Sweet Pea the Flower Truck and its owner, Kristina, you can follow her on Instagram at @sweetpeatheflowertruck or check out her website at https://www.sweetpeatheflowertruck.com/!
You can check out more photos from this gallery here on my website!
If you're looking to brand your own business, think about how you can tell your story through imagery. What emotions do you want your customers to feel? What message do you want to communicate? With a little creativity, you can create visuals that help your brand stand out and connect with your audience on a deeper level.
If you are looking to hire a photographer for a branding session and want to chat me with me about what it might look like to hire me, inquire with me here and let’s get chatting!
