I just recently shot a campaign for Canterbury Clothing featuring the 2016 English Rugby team. The English rugby team was in Brisbane doing some training before their big match against Australia in May. As part of Canterbury Clothing's new "Only the Committed" campaign I was asked to shoot portraits of each of the team members and then shoot some of the new clothes for their catalogue in a really beautifully run down old factory in an industrial part of the city. The main challenge was that the schedules of the athletes just simply didn't allow for us to take them all to some really cold and windy warehouse over an hour away from their training grounds to shoot portraits of them. We ended up shooting the portraits in a hotel room with the portrait lighting matching how I was lighting the warehouse location and then everything was stitched together in post.
Aside from the main challenge of getting that to work, I had to try and get something that felt like a sense of intensity of emotion from the players while I only had a few minutes to shoot each (and while their teammates were standing behind me doing everything they could to make them laugh). I got my fair share of ribbing and insults from the team as well and I ended up getting the nickname Professor X from the players by the end of the day (I'm bald.) After a frantic shooting pace shooting portraits and some laughs we wrapped up and headed out to the warehouse. We spent the day shooting the products and filling up the warehouse with smoke machines to get that really gritty industrial atmosphere.
It was a blast.
Client: Canterbury Clothing
Agency: Pentland Brands Creative
Director: Stuart Ross-Sheeran
Art Director: Blake Calderwood
Production by Chee Productions
