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Zoom in on Jeeval
20 Plays10 months ago
Noah sits down with Jeeval and discusses what it's like to be a Photography Manager at Loblaw Digital.
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Transcript
Introduction and Roles
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Commute. I'm one of your two hosts or other hosts. I'm a host. My name is Noah. I am our GM for PCO Digital.
00:00:15
Speaker
ah My pronouns are he and him and I'm here with my friend Jeeval. Do you want to introduce yourselves? Hello. Hello. I'm Jeeval. Should I tell everyone what I do? Yes, please. I'm a photography manager here at Loblaw Digital.
00:00:31
Speaker
and I've been here for five years. It's been five years? My anniversary is next week. Wow, happy anniversary. Depending on when this comes out. So we start around the same time. Did we? Well, sort
Photography Management at Loblaw
00:00:42
Speaker
of. July 24th was my first day. Okay, so I was January, but 2019. Yeah, 2019. What a year. It's been a time. Wow, look at that. Yeah.
00:00:50
Speaker
um So, Chivo, we're doing is starting to do a few episodes of Spotlights. right So, folks at LD have talked about, you know we want to hear more about the people that work here. We've talked about some different topics, but like we want to zone in on what people do. and so When I was jamming with Jacob and Kiana, who could we do? And like I thought of you right away, because like yeah one, we sit right near each other, so I get to like you know i hear the chaos hear the chaos that goes on. um But I think you have a super cool role at LD. um you know it's I feel like it's a little unspoken, and that's why we're here for it. We're going to speak it up, right? I think it is. yeah It's kind of a niche one. It is. so
00:01:34
Speaker
um Photography manager what what goes into that? What is your remit? Like what what are you responsible for? I won't get into your day-to-day afterwards for sure um and I feel like the title is a little like vague kind of on purpose so that I can do kind of as much as I Want to that's photography related but majority of the work that I do here is photography related whether that's capturing photography, scheduling photography, receiving photography. So anything sort of photo related will usually come across my desk, so to say. But primarily my job is to make sure that all three lines of business have up to date, correct, good quality photos for our customers. And how would you define a photo? Is it something that is taken with a camera? is that
00:02:27
Speaker
Is that it? It's a little murky. It's getting a little murky lately. um So ideally, yes, we would like a photo that's taken on a camera. But we do have some of our vendors on specifically PCX, all of our grocery businesses that submit renderings of their product. But we also accept that. As long as it looks like what your customer is getting, we'll take that too. So as long as it looks good, as long as it's high quality, we want to Love it.
Standards and Challenges in Photography
00:02:55
Speaker
I would love to pick your brain then on your thoughts on the photography on our PC Optima app, because I have a lot of opinions on it. But I feel like that is a whole different podcast. I would love to. We'll do a PCO episode. Oh, God. Yeah. So that's cool. That's your overall, like, what's a day to day, like a day in the life? Day in the life. I feel like you're here every day because I'm here every day. So what's a day in the life here?
00:03:17
Speaker
ah If we were talking day-to-day and what I would say is the majority of what takes up my day is processing images. And processing images sounds a little bit vague, but it's a lot of downloading, renaming files, resizing files, and then the end point is uploading these files to S3 for now, which is what we're using um for it to eventually go and speak to Helios for it to show up on site. But um I do this for all lines of business, Shoppers Drug Mart, Joe Fresh, and any PCX banner.
00:03:51
Speaker
um It does take up a lot of time. We process thousands and thousands of images per week. I think last year alone, just on Joe Fresh, we processed 40,000 images wow for the entire year. That's product images. Just product images. I think there was just over 10,000 products that we onboarded last year. And on average, each product has like four to five photos.
00:04:14
Speaker
So it was $40,000 just for Joe Fresh. It's like 2x that for PCX because we have a bigger assortment. And we encourage you know all of our vendors to submit more than five images just to get a little more. I would have thought it's the opposite. I would have thought that Joe Fresh probably takes the most effort because it's always new product. We're like bananas stay bananas. If you were talking about effort, Joe Fresh is actually the least effort. really in in in relation to the work that I do. Interesting. Because we work with A plus studios yeah and they photograph everything. We're doing it all in-house. So they know what our visual specs are. They know what our naming convention is. They know exactly what we want to see on site. And we kind of work directly with them to make sure that it looks good and consistent. Oh, cool. So in that sense, it's super easy. All I do is get their images delivered to me. It's already named the way we want it. It's already sized the way we want it. And all I have to do is upload it. So in that sense, we can take on a lot more.
00:05:12
Speaker
So how does that compare to like what you do for PCX? PCX is really complicated and I would say that's the the biggest. How so? We get images from so many places because we don't shoot everything in-house. Our assortment is so big. We work with national brands as well. There are so many places that I get images for from PCX. We do say that vendors can submit their own images if they want. ah Vendors can also subscribe to GS1, which is a content syndication service. So they can subscribe, get their photography done, their content copy, and have it all sent to the respective retailers. We also have a flyer team that shoots
00:05:50
Speaker
some content that we like to leverage, because we can always leverage print images, and it's not always the other way around. So we like to leverage whatever we can there. So i that's three places already. And then A+, that shoots for Joe Fresh, also shoots our control brand items for us in the same you know specs that we tell them to, the naming convention, ah sizing, and looks-wise. So is control brand easier to manage versus
The Impact of Consistent Photography
00:06:16
Speaker
vendors? Versus vendors, for sure.
00:06:18
Speaker
I think in terms of vendor submissions, there's a lot more work that goes into it back and forth, making sure that Do you have like one vendor that's like a bane of your existence? Spill it. Spill it. Spill it. Spill it. There's a couple. There's a couple. Um, and I feel bad because they are smaller vendors. So this doesn't mean they make a bad product. No, they don't. I think it's just because they don't have as many resources. I can't remember the name of the company. It might be Acropore. They're like dairy, you know, cheeses, things like that. I've seen that in my fridge. Yeah. And I think because they're a little bit of a smaller team, they're not Pepsi. They're not Coke. They don't have an entire team to.
00:06:54
Speaker
create assets for all these different retailers. So they're very much going to submit it once and just kind of give it to everybody. And then you do with it what you need to, but they kind of consistently. It's so cool. Like I love that. I love doing spotlights because like something like that, you would never think like, oh, it's just another vendor submitting a photo. But like to you, they send it off on your life. And I have to go back and forth with them and explain to them why we do this. And the reason that we do this and the reason that we have such specific guidelines is that we want to make sure that our experience for the customers is the most consistent. So we're not just, these rules aren't just arbitrary. We compare with our competitors quarterly just on photography and how we are doing compared to Walmart, how we're doing compared to Metro, how we're doing compared to Costco. How do we do that?
00:07:42
Speaker
I just go online and look. oh So i pick this I pick specific categories every quarter. So I'll pick a couple deli items, a couple of fresh items, some little center of store things. just seeing And sometimes if I can, the exact same product. So what does a tree of meat look like if you buy it from us? What does the same tree of beef look like if you go to Walmart and buy it?
00:08:02
Speaker
just to see how they're photographing it, how they're presenting it. And for the last three years that we've done it, we have come out more consistent. And to me, that just means that it's a better experience. And the because since that it's a it's subjective, right? So like it's you're the subject matter experts. Exactly. Obviously, if you say goes, I mean, is that is that how we do we have no tool? No, more or less, it's it's just that it looks cohesive, that if every image is on a solid white background, if every image doesn't have a shadow on it, if every image sort of looks like it came from the same place, it just provides a cleaner look on the website. It just creates a little more consistency, whereas if anybody wants to go to Costco's website, um their product photography is not the greatest. I mean, it's good. You can tell it's shot in the studio, yeah but it's not consistent. um
00:08:51
Speaker
I just find that it creates a little bit of a chaotic look on the page, whereas ours is very clean, very nice. Each product is on a solid white background. It's centered in the frame. You know what you're seeing. You can get a nice preview of it before. It's essentially what you will see on the shelf is what you should be seeing.
00:09:09
Speaker
Oh, you're pulling my heartstrings on what I want, the images to look like on PCO. What do you mean? ah Again, I think it's another podcast. ok We'll talk. We'll get into it. We'll talk. yeah and You sit near me. So now I
Balancing Freelance and Corporate Work
00:09:21
Speaker
can really bother you about it. yeah Any changes do go through me. so Yeah? Me and accessibility. We need to make sure they're accessible.
00:09:28
Speaker
Fair. Yes. So outside of product, you also take lovely pictures of all the humans here. We do. So like if you see anything on social, all the events we do are lovely headshots that have made their way across Lauren's her portfolio now. That's all you. Yep. All the headshots we take picture day, yeah day one, picture day two. Yeah. um All the events that we do in-house. We actually only recently started shooting all those to make sure that we have a consistent gallery. And I feel like that's really helpful for our colleagues to be able to have access to photos that they can then post on their social networks, LinkedIn, wherever they want to, um and just kind of show off that they work here. I think it's great. I like here i think the employer brands done a great job. And honestly, the the pictures are a big reason for it. Awesome. did Big shout out to Kayanna.
00:10:22
Speaker
um So you've been here for almost five years. So I could ask you, and you could definitely give an informed answer to, like, what do you love about Loblot Digital? I honestly love, and I know that I feel like other people have come on the podcast and said this too, but the company culture here, the people here has what has kept me here because I think sometimes, and this is me being completely candid and honest and people that I work with know this, but sometimes the day-to-day of my job can get a little monotonous when all you're doing is uploading images and downloading images. Being able to work with other teams, working with EV lately, working with our design teams,
00:11:03
Speaker
is what makes it so much more fun being able to do all of these different things. um And then, of course, like all of the events that we have, there's so much. Like, where else are we going to play Mario Kart for two hours at work? yeah like it It's just so much fun. And I feel like everyone is just really nice here. What's been your favorite event so far?
00:11:24
Speaker
Last year's summer barbecue and every holiday party that I have ever been to has been... Holiday parties are fun. ah So much fun. Yeah, i own I've never been at a company that does it better. so Truly. We have a lot of fun. yeah yeah um So staying obviously with the photography theme because that's what we're here to talk about. You don't just do that here at LD. You got a side gig. I do. I also am a business owner um and I own my own photography company and I specialize in product photography. So I do feel like both of these complement each other. Like I learn a lot from this job that I can take to sort of smaller companies that I work with in my freelance career that I can help them kind of be informed on what's
00:12:09
Speaker
good and new in the e-commerce world, it just helps them grow and hopefully they can be on shelves like ours. um But even vice versa, all of the practice that I get to do in my freelance career, I can bring here to implement on our photography. We do work with a lot of studios here as well, like agencies, um external studios that we work with to shoot PCS campaigns, shoppers drugmark campaigns, and part of my role is to also coordinate those shoots and make them happen, make sure that we have everyone that needs to be here on set, making sure all of our concepts are communicated clearly and that we're kind of staying on track and getting what we've asked for. So I think that the two really complement each other and I'm able to sort of transfer a lot of the skills from one to the other. Do you do you only do product or you do humans as well? Sorry? Like humans.
00:13:02
Speaker
Humans, yes, yeah. I have opened my my scope a little bit in the last couple years to do humans. I was, especially in the pandemic, yeah strictly just products. Oh, you weren't one of those people that got people on their porch to do those far away. and No. my I honestly, I struggle with like people generally. I know I take the head shots, but it's easier to do like a one-on-one.
00:13:24
Speaker
um I struggle to do like events like weddings and birthday parties because I feel like it's a really high stress situation. yeah The events here are so casual, they're so fun, there's no pressure to get like a specific shot. It's just captured people having fun. I feel like weddings are very high
Focus on Product Photography
00:13:40
Speaker
stress. yeah that's like the most important day of someone's life and I just don't want that to be on me. But smaller things like little portrait sessions, engagement shoots, things like that are really fun for me. And then of course products because they're not going to talk to you. You can just have your music. So any like, any like families or any like, there's anyone here? Yeah, I just did a second birthday party. So if you want to do like a little mini celebration,
00:14:06
Speaker
cool you know where to find me nice does your company have a name it's called geeville taylor photo oh love it very fitting original very original i came up with it 10 years ago and i just didn't want to change it and now it's registered that way so i'm just gonna leave it so you must be busy like does it take up like do you leave here and like that's your next thing it is it is most days I call it my second shift. Most days I am working sort of the five to nine is what happens where I'm delivering galleries for clients or I'm reaching out to smaller businesses that may be
00:14:39
Speaker
look like they need help or if anyone in the sort of local area is interested. In the pandemic, I worked with a lot of bakeries that needed to sort of stand up an online presence because they were just like walking in and order type of thing and then you only could have like two people in your bakery at a time. So they would stand up like online ordering services, get them on Uber Eats, things
Personal Insights and Episode Close
00:15:00
Speaker
like that.
00:15:00
Speaker
Is it all CPG? What'd you do? like Yes. yeah Okay, so nothing like jewelry or cars. your Jewelry is really tough for me. yeah It just requires so much more equipment and like you really need to have time to learn how to photograph. Jewelry cars are huge, so it's very just like you need space, you need so much experience. I just don't feel like I'm there yet. So it's a lot of smaller products.
00:15:24
Speaker
um Yeah, I feel like my brother is a jeweler. Yeah, it's very tough. And I always argue about his carvies, like the type of expertise you need to shoot jewelry and the equipment as well, like you mentioned. Yeah, it's tough. It's a different route. It's tough, but it's fun. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're gonna wrap it up, but I like to do a bit of a rapid fire. Love it. I didn't tell you any of it. Nope. No. Okay, what's your favorite candy?
00:15:50
Speaker
Kinder Buenos, it's chocolate, it's not candy, but I'm a chocolate grill. That's fair. and yes um Favorite place to go for a walk?
00:16:00
Speaker
Okay, this is gonna be not the answer you want. But I have a walking pad, and so I walk in my room while at work. um Over the pandemic, I got a standing desk and a walking pad. So if I ever need to do like in the zone work, I'll set the timer for 45 minutes and I can just Walk wherever I want, but I'm in my room. One thing that makes you happy. Oh my god. The sun. One thing that makes you sad. The rain.
00:16:33
Speaker
um Last but not least, what's your superpower? I'm going to say time management. Oh, I like that one. Based on what we've discussed here today.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, I would give that to you. Well, gee, well, this was fun. It was so much fun. Thank you for doing this. Can I give a few shout outs? Give all the shout outs, yes. I promised a few people that I would shout them out on this episode. How about it? First and foremost, I would like to shout out all of the merchandising and trading teams for all of our lines of business. I work very closely with them, you know, Crystal.
00:17:09
Speaker
No Fresh, I work with her all the time. Jackie, Tina, and Jamie from the PCX team. Steven from Shoppers Drug Mart. Besties. And then obviously everybody else that I work with and get to work with on a daily basis, Kiana, of course, on EB. And then we'll- Stop crying, Kiana. Kiana's like in tears yeah with her Kleenex. yeah um And the entire DX team because they really and empower me to do what I do here.
00:17:36
Speaker
Awesome. And you for interviewing me today. ah No, this was a no brainer. This was great. I really enjoyed this. Cool. Thank you for doing it. Thank you, folks. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Hope you're enjoying your commute as well. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.