I recently shot a series of images for the award-winning brewery, Mountain Culture Beer Company, based in the Blue Mountains. One of the owners of Mountain Culture, Harriet McCready, approached me because she wanted a lifestyle shoot for the brewery which captured the essence of outdoor lifestyle imagery of the 1970s and early 1980s. Part of the focus of the imagery was a stylistic choice based on the colour palettes and large film grain of the magazine advertisements of the time. What Mountain Culture really wanted to capture though was the easy-going approach to outdoor life that those old ads reminded us of- the simplicity of camping and hiking that used to be about throwing on some minimal gear and heading out into the bush. Mountain Culture wanted to have a nostalgic taste of the mountain lifestyle unadorned by the new gear and high tech fabrics that make up the modern outdoor experience.
SCENIC WORLD: TERRACE BAR
Recent lifestyle and landscape photography for a series of ads announcing Scenic World’s Terrace Bar. Open seasonally, the Terrace Bar allows for locals and tourists to enjoy evening music, food and drinks while taking in the stunning surroundings and sunsets of the Blue Mountains and the Three Sisters.
Mountain Culture Brewery's First Ad
I was asked by Mountain Culture Brewery to do a photo shoot for them- they needed an image for their first ever two-page spread ad in a major magazine. If you’re not familiar with them, Mountain Culture Brewery opened up in Katoomba a few years ago and immediately won “Best Brewery of the Year” in Australia, has produced the number one beer in Australia called Status Quo, and is now considered one of the best breweries in Oz and they make seriously good beers and have a lot of fun doing it. They didn’t really know what to do but being as gifted in marketing as they are in beer making, the brief from the owners was “We’re thinking something along the lines of a 1980s Burt Reynolds centerfold.” Owner and head brewer D.J. McCready turned out to be a male model natural.
It’s probably the hardest I’ve ever laughed on a shoot and I made sure in post production to give it some sweet 80s glamour soft-focus highlight bling.
AD Campaign: NRMA
We recently worked with Houston Design Group in Sydney to create a range of lifestyle images for NRMA /National Roads and Motorists' Association. Outside of their insurance and roadside assistance programs, they've recently developed partnerships with camping and caravan parks around Australia as well as new phone apps that help travelers and NRMA customers with a variety of tasks. We created a small image library for NRMA around these new products for them that focused on family road trips, travel and app use.
Client: NRMA
Agency: Houston Design Group
Ad Campaign: Weipa Tourism for Rio Tinto
A few months ago I traveled to Weipa in the western Cape York peninsula in Queensland to shoot a campaign for Rio Tinto. Weipa is a small, remote town with a huge bauxite (raw aluminium ore) mine that wants families to come and put down roots as development and local investment looks to grow in the coming years.
Client: Rio Tinto / Weipa Tourism
Agency: ChannelZero
Creative Director: Ben Croft
Ad Campaign: Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross
A few months ago I shot a bunch of images for Mitsubishi for their new car in Australia, the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.
When we did this shoot this was the only Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross in Australia. It has a busy schedule and the only days I had to shoot it just happened to coincide with the Melbourne Cup race in Victoria, which is something of a holy week there. We couldn't find a location scout who was available (i.e. wanted to take time out of the Melbourne Cup festivities to find locations) so I had to go down to Victoria a week early and find my own locations. Because I really didn't know the Victorian countryside I started every morning looking at Google satellite maps for terrain and roads that might have something interesting to shoot on- especially private properties that looked like they had roads on them that we could get permission to use. I would then spend the next 12 hours driving every day combing over every road in that area and then try and contact homeowners that might have a nice road. After driving around 1000kms of small backroads, at the 11th hour I finally found a family that let us shoot on their land. We couldn't have asked for more amazing weather.
To do the aerial shots I worked with Flying Dragon, a drone company that specialises in high-end cinematography. I had experimented with several readily available drones like the Phantoms and the still image quality just didn't stack up for the size we were going to have to use for the stills. We had to use a camera that was over 30 megapixels to satisfy their print needs and the only drones that can hoist up a camera large enough to do that are the heavy duty 8 blade drones that require professional pilots and cost a fortune. The operator was in charge of the flight controls and navigation on one monitor and I controlled the camera gimbal and captures on the other. I have to say, despite the challenges of short flight times due to battery power, I definitely preferred using a big drone to hanging out of the side of a helicopter.
Client: Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross
Agency: Richards Rose Executive
Executive CD: Adam Rose
CD: Liam Hillier
Ad Campaign: Mistubishi ASX and Outlander
I recently had opportunity to shoot images of the new Mitsubishi ASX and Outlander in a car campaign for the Sydney agency Richards Rose. I spent a week in Melbourne working on the shoot, shooting alongside a large TVC crew and taking the cars off whenever I had a chance to shoot whatever I could grab. It was a lot of fun and the weather was surprisingly wonderful for Melbourne in the winter.
Client: Mitsubishi
Agency: Richards Rose
Producer: Katie Morton
CD: Christopher Johnson
Sr AD:George Bassiakos
Campaign: Destination Gold Coast
A campaign I just shot for Gold Coast Tourism has just started to roll out. We set out to look past the party reputation that the Gold Coast is well known for and tried to capture the sense of how beautiful the Gold Coast and the area around the GC really is. There will be more shots from the campaign to come but this is what I've got so far...
Client: Gold Coast Tourism
Agency: JWT Sydney
AD Campaign: Australian NBN
I just shot an image for a new campaign for the Australian National Broadband Network. The shoot was part of a larger TVC ad featuring a story of two deaf women who take advantage of the new high speed network by chatting (through sign language) over video.
Client: Australia NBN Agency: BWM Dentsu
New Work: Surfing and Lifestyle Portraits
I've done some new work with Brett from Bella Management, playing with ideas I've had for a while about shooting surfing portraits and some exercise/sports work. We lucked out by having one of the most beautiful sunrises at Maroubra Beach I'd ever seen.
New Work: Lifestyle shoot with Justin and Amelia
I've been shooting some new work lately and have been doing some shoots with some of the talent from Bella Management here in Sydney. I had approached Bella Mgmt with some ideas and one of which was about a couple on a roadtrip, dirty and sweaty from days on the road in a crappy car and they're lost in the middle of nowhere. I don't really do very much work that falls into the fashion realm so I tend to want to mess up their hair and clothes and make it feel more real I guess. I was kind of surprised they went for it and ended up loving the shots. Can't wait to do more of these.
AD Campaign: Qantas Airlines
A new ad campaign that I shot for Qantas Airlines hit the streets last week. I spent the better part of last month working on it and among the many things that were great about this job were that I had the opportunity to use a Boeing 737 and a jet turbine worth several million dollars as props. I was really excited about the job because it was really about highlighting the real people and their stories behind every Qantas employee.
Creative Team: Agency: BWM Dentsu Asheen Naidu – Executive Creative Director Sarah Parris – Senior Art Director Kevin MacNamara – Senior Copywriter Bonnie Ledsam – Senior Account Manager Simon Holdaway – Senior Print Producer
VicHealth- Team Up Fitness
I recently shot for VicHealth's new campaign "Team Up!" with DDB which is focused on getting people started on a healthy fitness regimen in the state of Victoria. We wanted to take the intimidation factor out of beginning an exercise regimen and emphasise the social component of doing something like joining a yoga class or running with a friend. I shot stills as well as directed 2 short spots for the campaign.
Client: VicHealth- Team Up
Director: Joe Wigdahl
Camera / Editor: Ash Koek
Art Director: Niki Horan
Agecy: DDB Melbourne
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Warm Weather is Cricket Weather
I live near a cricket oval and it is actually one of my favourite things to hear people playing cricket and hitting balls in the batting cages. It means that Spring is here in full force and we've got months of cricket to look forward to. Not that I actually will watch a whole game or even understand what's going on, but it's one of those things that is quintessentially Australian. I actually don't understand the sport at all and the jargon and statistics that get rattled off during a game make it impenetrable. Like watching Whack Batt from the The Incredible Mr. Fox. But I love the look of the sport. I'm starting to shoot portraits of the cricketers in my town and I'll be posting more throughout the summer.
Campaign: Carnival Cruises
I recently shot a big ad campaign and image library for Carnival Cruises and the images have just started to hit the streets. We spent about a week on the Carnival Cruise ship The Spirit island hopping around New Caledonia and then sailing back to Sydney. I really loved this job because we brought on 2 real families for the shoot and we just took pictures of them having a lot of fun. No acting, no hair and makeup or wardrobe. Most of the photo shoot went along the lines of "Hey, can you guys eat some ice cream and then go down those water slides over and over again?" Then the kids would basically go nuts, everyone would run around and I would try to keep up, shooting as much as I could. We would shoot all day every day and then have dinner together at night and had a pretty happy routine- the kids were always looking forward to our next activity because they knew that I was going to let them go crazy. At the end of the shoot the kids cried because they were going to miss us so much. There were so many fun, genuine moments that I just picked a few of my favorites here.
Campaign: ResMed Sleep Apnea Machines
A while back I shot a campaign for ResMed- a company that produces top-of-the-line sleep apnea therapy machines. Sleep apnea is a medical condition where, for a number of reasons, people may stop breathing during sleep. This can happen from a few times a night to dozens of times an hour and can become a major medical issue. It lowers the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream, it puts stress on the heart, it causes a lot of problems. The ResMed devices, also known as CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machines are basically silent air compressors that push warm, humidified air into the patient's nose or mouth while they're sleeping so that they're still getting air when their body would normally stop breathing.
We had a massive shoot schedule for this job so that the client would have a library of images for their multiple needs- I've only posted a handful of the tearsheets because there were so many different images and uses. We shot product photos and lifestyle images to cover a broad range of use from brochures and in-store displays to web and advertising and we had to shoot multiple scenarios covering the broad demographic range of their customers.
Client: ResMed http://www.resmed.com/au/ Agency: Tonic the Agency, Sydney Producers: Z-Space
Red Rooster's New Look
The Australian food chain Red Rooster has started to go with a totally new look. Alongside a totally new design of their restaurants they're also going with a new look for their ad imagery. I was asked to shoot some shots for print alongside a TVC crew that was filming some new spots for Red Rooster.
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Trout Fishing trip in Australia- The Wollondilly River
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A few weeks ago a good friend of mine decided to take me trout fishing with his brother to one of his family's favourite secret trout fishing spots. Gerrod and I became friends before I moved to Australia as his wife and my wife went to art school together. It also just so happens that our kids were born a few months apart, are great playmates and are often mistaken for twins. Gerrod and his family also happens to live just two blocks away from us, so he's basically family. He's been an avid fisherman his entire life and I was one growing up. I quit fishing after my teens again and didn't pick it up again until the global financial collapse hit in 2008, the photography jobs dried up for a while and I had a lot of time on my hands. I spent a lot of time in the wonderful Driftless Region of Wisconsin but when I moved to Australia I was convinced that the climate would be too hot and dry and the water too warm to go trout fishing. I packed away my gear and would just get misty-eyed when my buddy in Oregon would post pictures of his boozy Pacific Northwest fishing trips complete with massive salmon and steelhead catches.
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Gerrod and I had been planning to go fishing for quite some time but it's hard to get away when we're working dads but after some careful planning we were able to do some trips to the Snowy Mountains and the Wollondilly River. It's winter time here so the water is cold enough for the trout to run and there are certain areas upstream from dams where it's still legal to fish this late in the year. We left well before dawn and spent some time driving through cliffhanging dirt roads and hiking through fields and woods of frost to get to the spot. The trout had just begun to do their run to spawn but it hadn't rained much and the river levels were low so despite the fact that I caught this fat 2kg beauty on my second cast, we didn't catch anything else for the rest of the day. That was fine by me though. I'm not one of those fisherman who likes to haul in and release fish all day. I'll spare the fish the stress. If I catch my keeper fish, I'm done for the day and I'll just spend the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the nature.
