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

Subaru Forester 2013- Norway

A few months after shooting the first leg of the 2013 Subaru Forester's trip around the world, AOI Pro contacted me and asked if I'd like to go to Norway to shoot the next leg. I jumped at the chance- I've always wanted to go to Norway and after I moved to Australia I considered the chances of ever going to be close to nil. Even though there would only be 4-5 hours of daylight a day, -20C most days and it would be something like 28-35 hours of travel each way depending on flight times and delays and it would be right before Christmas, I had to go.

Read More

Subaru 2013 Forester- Australia

In September I was asked by the Japanese advertising agencies Hakuhodo and Aoi Pro to take part in a year-long project shooting the new Subaru Forester as it began a drive around the world through some its toughest terrain. I shot stills alongside a motion/TVC production headed by the Australian cinematographer Daniel Ardilley with the Australian production handled by Dynamite Productions. I felt pretty lucky to be involved in this production as I knew I was going to be going to parts of Australia that I probably would never get the chance to go see otherwise and I'd be able to go up in a helicopter to get some great views of the incredible Aussie outback landscape.

Read More

Chicago Storm Pictures

I woke up this morning with an email from a friend back in Chicago warning me that several people were sending around a picture on Facebook that I took, claiming that it was theirs. Apparently there were some pretty ominous clouds over Chicago and someone either mistakenly (or intentionally) said that this picture was taken yesterday of the same storm and at some point, the image went viral on Facebook and Reddit with several people claiming they took it

Read More