I recently had the pleasure of working with Joel Dickinson, a young entrepreneur who has set up a great store www.geniegadgets.com selling the most amazing gadgets and boys toys (and girls too!) you can imagine.
Joel’s team got in touch to get me to help with a promotional campaign, for which they wanted an image that was vibrant, punchy and overall, fun!
This is the story of how that image came together…
The image was to accompany a promotional piece entitled “Up to your neck in gadgets?” It needed to illustrate the overwhelming variety of techno-gadgetry available and yet not be a static shot of products. After chewing it over we agreed on the concept of quite literally drowning in gadgets.
Joel’s team had arranged for me to shoot at his HQ as that’s where all the gadgets were! The first hurdle to overcome was how to balance the gadgets around him sufficiently high. The solution was to use a table with a removable insert. A new insert was made from stiff card with a hole just big enough for Joel’s head and shoulders to squeeze through.
Joel was sitting on a chair and we proceeded to carefully build the gadgets around him. at this stage I’d like to personally thank blu-tack and Sellotape for their invaluable contribution to the session.
I wanted a neutral background so I rigged up a mid grey-roll and then I lit Joel with hard lighting from the sides but soft from the front - having the image in my head of what the final was going to look like once I’d done the retouching and colour toning.
Here’s stage 1:
The final image was going to have a couple of the remote controlled gadgets flying round Joel’s head so plenty of space was left to comp these in. I wanted the facial expression to convey a sense of “uh-oh” and impending disaster so we shot several frames trying different expressions.
In between frames we spent time shoring up the stack of gadgets which had a mind of their own (especially the monkey in the background!). Any slight movement from Joel would entail a minor gadgetslide and a reset.
Finally, with the hero frames in the bag, we went about shooting the plane and helicopter in the same light so I could comp these in later.
Reviewing the images back at base I felt we needed a more vibrant colour for the background to complement the tones in the image so I settled on a slate blue gradient. Here’s the image after the new background was dropped in and after some colour toning and retouching:
All that remained was to comp in the helicopter and the plane. I also removed the helicopter from the left-hand side box to balance the composition as the hero frame had it sitting there and I wanted the helicopter on that side in the air.
Here’s the final image. Joel and his team loved the tonality and the vibrancy. It was a really fun project to work on.
You can see a larger version of the final in the “people” gallery on my website portfolio
Until later….
J
