Commissioned

Painter for Pro Gold painting materials

Pro gold is a company that manufactures everything a professional painter needs: brushes, sand paper, gloves … everything. You get the idea. For this advertisement, we wanted to express pushing oneself beyond ordinary limits to get the best results possible.

The concept: a man abseiled, hanging from a building tower, painting the wooden exterior moldings of a church.

We had very specific requirements for the shoot. The building, for instance, had to have wood somewhere on the tower that needed to be painted, and we also needed a balcony on the building to set up the necessary equipment for the shoot. After a thorough search we found a church on the Dutch island of Texel, a perfect building set in a fantastic location–all without distractions cluttering the background.

We planned the shoot on a beautiful day in September. We envisioned an image of the hanging painter backlit by the morning sun. We wanted to capture this idea without the help of computer trickery. There was only a short period we had in which to take the shot, somewhere between five to fifteen minutes, where the contrast wasn’t too high to avoided white clipping and underexposed blacks.

We set up our gear the day before, including the ropes, the camera, and the remote controls and did some testing. That way we knew exactly what to do the next morning. On the day of the shoot there was an extremely dense fog. We went up the tower around 5:30 but the sun was not powerful enough to burn away the heavy mist. Luckily, we were able to do several shots of the upcoming sun as well as the painter, using different exposure values. That way, we were able to composite the shot in the computer. Not ideal, but the result was perfect.

Saluki

This advert was created for a dog-walking client.

The Saluki, or gazelle hound, is a beautiful creature with origins in Iran, or former Persia. Historically, nomads used Saluki hounds for hunting and other tasks. Built for running, these agile dogs won’t stand still … not even for a picture.

This comical image was imagined by one of my close friends, art director Ton van Jole. We wanted to show, in an intelligent way, that the dog walker offered such incredible exercise for your dog that the animal in question would need a relaxing soak after their workout.

Of course, the Saluki being the kind of animal it is, I was only able to capture about five pictures of the dog actually standing sill in the bucket. I used those images and matched them to another image where this astounding hound had his head proudly in the air, and created one chill Saluki, getting his well-deserved rest.