The story behind Spruce Crestline

Kenji Murakami started Spruce Crestline in the spring of 2017 after eight years as a staff photographer at a commercial agency in Osaka. The agency work was steady and the clients were large, but the billing model drove him quietly mad. Clients would approve a quote, then receive an invoice with line items for every extra hour, every additional edit, every file format. He watched good relationships sour over invoices. When he left to open his own studio in Kyoto's Higashiyama district, the first decision he made was that pricing would be flat, stated upfront, and never adjusted after the fact.