Chicago & Phoenix Director of Photography, Cinematographer, Drone Pilot, and Video Production
The Great Escape | 9-Year Commercial Production Partnership | Jamie Link Photography
Client: The Great Escape
Industry: Retail - Outdoor Living & Furniture
Services: Studio Design Consultation, Product Photography, Corporate Video, Store Tours, Tutorials, TV Ad Production
Partnership Duration: 9 Years
Services: Commercial Photography · Corporate Video Production · Drone Cinematography · Steadicam Operation
The Challenge
The Great Escape is a multi-location outdoor living retailer carrying a large and constantly rotating catalog of patio furniture, fire pits, grills, and outdoor accessories. Like most retailers in this category, they needed a consistent stream of high-quality product imagery to support their website, marketing materials, and in-store displays, without the cost and logistics of renting commercial studio space for every shoot.
The early solution was improvised. Shoots happened on the showroom floor, using custom-built bounce flats to surround furniture sets with white and isolate them from the retail environment. The results were functional, but the setup was time-consuming, inconsistent across shoots, and limited in the types of content that could be produced efficiently.
The goal was to build something better, a purpose-built production capability that could turn their existing corporate headquarters space into a professional studio environment, without a commercial studio budget.
Studio Design & Planning
The Great Escape's corporate headquarters had an underutilized space, a former break room with enough square footage to work with, but none of the infrastructure a commercial product shoot requires. The question was whether it could be converted into a functional studio environment without a commercial buildout budget.
Working directly with The Great Escape team, Jamie consulted on the layout, surface treatment, and lighting infrastructure needed to make the space production-ready. The priorities were straightforward: a seamless white cyclorama surface large enough to accommodate full outdoor living sets including dining tables, sectional sofas, and fire pit configurations, a lighting setup that could be replicated consistently from shoot day to shoot day, and enough ceiling clearance to work with large modifiers at the distances furniture-scale photography requires.
The result was a dedicated production studio built inside their existing facility, purpose-built for their catalog, operated on their schedule, and owned entirely by their team rather than rented by the day.
Production Workflow
With the studio infrastructure in place, the production workflow became the competitive advantage. A typical shoot day at The Great Escape is built for volume and consistency, the studio environment, established lighting approach, and tethered shooting workflow allow the team to move efficiently through a high SKU count without sacrificing image quality.
On a standard production day, the team covers approximately 400 individual product images across multiple furniture sets and configurations. Products range from individual chairs and fire pits to large dining sets, sectional sofas, and full outdoor living vignettes. Tethered shooting allows immediate review and approval on set, reducing the back-and-forth that typically adds time and cost to high-volume product shoots.
Beyond Product Photography
What began as a product photography engagement has expanded over nine years into a full production partnership. In addition to the ongoing catalog photography, Jamie Link Photography now produces corporate messaging videos, interior store tours, product tutorials, and is currently in pre-production on television ad content for The Great Escape.
Each content type uses the same studio infrastructure and established production relationship — which means faster execution, lower per-project cost, and visual consistency across every piece of content the brand puts into market. For a regional retailer managing multiple content needs on a controlled budget, that consistency compounds in value over time.
Video Production Across Every Format
The video production scope at The Great Escape covers every format a multi-location retailer needs to run a content operation at scale. Product tutorials walk customers through installation, setup, and maintenance for pools, hot tubs, fire pits, and outdoor living products. How-to videos cover chemical balancing, seasonal opening and closing procedures, equipment connections, and water care. the kind of content that drives consistent organic search traffic and reduces customer service load at the same time.
Store tour videos document new showroom openings, seasonal floor resets, and product collections — giving customers a reason to visit and giving the brand a repeatable format for location-level content. Corporate brand messaging videos communicate company values, team introductions, and announcements directly from leadership.
Production takes place both in-store and on location depending on the format. In-store shoots use the showroom floor itself as the production environment, products in their natural retail context, with a lighting and camera setup that makes the environment look intentional rather than improvised. On-location shoots extend the content scope to customer installations, outdoor environments, and product demonstrations that require real-world settings to land with the intended audience.
As the cyclorama studio comes online, it adds a controlled production environment for product-focused video formats that benefit from clean backgrounds and consistent lighting, expanding the range of content that can be produced efficiently on a single shoot day across both photography and video.
Building a YouTube Channel from the Ground Up
In 2018, The Great Escape launched a YouTube channel to support customer education around pool ownership, maintenance, and outdoor living. At the time the channel had 13 subscribers and approximately 400 total views. Jamie Link Photography has filmed and edited every video on the channel since launch.
The Great Escape's creative director and regional manager develop the scripts and on-camera talent. Jamie handles everything else, camera operation, lighting, direction, editing, and post-production. The result is a channel that now has nearly 2 million total views, over 1500 subscribers, and individual videos regularly reaching 30,000 to 50,000 views each. The channel has become a leading resource for pool tutorials in their market, driving organic search traffic and customer trust for the brand on a platform where most regional retailers have no meaningful presence.
That kind of growth doesn't happen by accident. It comes from consistent production quality, a repeatable filming workflow, and a long-term commitment to content output, which is exactly what an ongoing production partnership makes possible.
Results
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Ongoing production partnership spanning 9 years
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Approximately 400 product images captured per shoot day
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Purpose-built cyclorama studio designed for furniture-scale commercial photography
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YouTube channel grown from 13 subscribers and 400 views in 2018 to nearly 2 million total views and 1500 + subscribers, every video filmed and edited by Jamie Link Photography
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Individual tutorial videos consistently reaching 30,000 to 50,000 views each
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Channel recognized as a leading pool and outdoor living resource in their regional market
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Expanding content scope: product photography, corporate video, store tours, tutorials, and TV ad production
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Consistent visual output supporting web, marketing, in-store, and social content needs across multiple retail locations
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Hundreds of videos produced across product tutorials, how-to content, store tours, and corporate brand messaging
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Production formats include in-store shoots, on-location production, and studio-based video, all filmed and edited by Jamie Link Photography
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Video content embedded across the client website's resource center, driving organic search traffic and supporting ongoing customer education
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Cyclorama studio designed to support both photography and video production as scope expands
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