Some jobs come with a proper adrenaline rush, and this one was right up there. Back in August, I spent a morning at the Natural History Museum shooting a commercial job for Tonies, working before the doors opened to the public. We had one hour. That was it.

If you’re not familiar with the brand, Tonies® make the little screen-free audio figures kids pop onto a box to play music and stories. My job was to get PR-ready images for their social media, showing the Tonie in situ against the museum’s iconic backdrop, and in use, being handled and played with by a child. The shoot took place at the Natural History Museum, before the doors opened for the day.

Sourcing the model

Part of the brief was finding the right child for the shoot, so I helped source a model who could handle an early start, a big empty museum, and a fair bit of direction, all while looking natural rather than posed. It’s the kind of thing that often comes up on commercial and branding shoots: the photography is only half the job, and getting the right person in front of the camera matters just as much. That’s honestly the trickiest bit of any commercial shoot with kids: you need genuine reactions, not a performance. We got lucky. She was curious, unbothered by the space being so vast and quiet, and happy to just get stuck into playing.

Working the clock

We arrived while the museum was still closed, which is a genuinely strange feeling. No crowds, no queues, just that enormous entrance hall and the blue whale skeleton hanging overhead, completely silent. It was also stiflingly hot, even that early, so between takes we were ducking into any bit of shade we could find and keeping everyone topped up with water.

With only an hour before the public were let in, there wasn’t room for indecision. I’d already scouted the shots I needed mentally: the Tonie box clearly visible against the architecture, and then a second set showing it actually being played with, hands on it, that moment of a child pressing play and listening. Both had to work for social, so clean backgrounds and enough breathing room around the subject for cropping mattered as much as the moment itself.

We moved fast, checked images on the back of the camera as we went, and adjusted angles quickly rather than overthinking each frame. That pace actually helped. There’s no time to get precious about a shot when the museum opens in forty minutes, and that pressure tends to bring out sharper decision-making rather than worse work.

What came out of it

By the time we packed up, I had a strong set: some quiet, almost architectural shots of the Tonie sat against that huge stone hall, and others full of energy, a child genuinely absorbed in playing with it. That contrast between stillness and movement is exactly what a brand like this needs for social, something that stops the scroll but still feels true to what the product actually does.

It’s a different kind of job to a family or newborn session, but the core of it is the same thing I care about in any shoot: getting something real rather than something staged, even when there’s a client brief and a very tight deadline attached.

If you’re a brand looking for commercial or PR photography that needs to feel natural rather than stock-photo stiff, get in touch and let’s talk about what you need.