Joe Wigdahl 13/10/16 Joe Wigdahl 13/10/16

Campaign: 2016 English Rugby Team for Canterbury Clothing

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

Joe Wigdahl 8/6/16 Joe Wigdahl 8/6/16

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.

Joe Wigdahl 4/11/15 Joe Wigdahl 4/11/15

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

[vimeo 125544198 w=500&h=280]

[vimeo 125544197 w=500&h=280]

Joe Wigdahl 16/10/15 Joe Wigdahl 16/10/15

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.

Joe Wigdahl 23/7/14 Joe Wigdahl 23/7/14

Trout Fishing trip in Australia- The Wollondilly River

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.

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.

Joe Wigdahl 17/4/13 Joe Wigdahl 17/4/13

Aussie Bodies: Keep Going

A few months ago I was asked to shoot stills alongside a TVC production for Aussie Bodies. I shot portraits of several famous Aussie athletes and an everyday yoga mom in action for the Australian protein and supplements brand Aussie Bodies for use in print and online. Each story was a pretty inspiring one: Sally Fitzgibbons is a world champion professional surfer and started winning titles when she was 14 after just a few years of surfing. Kelly Cartwright lost her leg to cancer when she was 15 and has since climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and won gold and silver medals at the 2012 London Paralympics. Lewis Jetta was part of the Sydney Swan's 2012 AFL Premiership title known for several of his last-second game saving goals. Marcus Bottay is a Guinness Book of World Records holder for the rope climb and is sort of the king of those guys who work out in the fitness yard on Bondi Beach. He's also a big believer in freeing people from gym and healthclub memberships and teaching them that opportunities to get fit, be healthy and have fun are everywhere. It was one of those jobs where I felt lucky to get to meet a bunch of pretty inspiring people.

Sally Fitzgibbons for Aussie Bodies

Marcus Bottay for Aussie Bodies

Lewis Jetta for Aussie Bodies

Kelly Cartwright for Aussie Bodies

Joe Wigdahl 25/7/12 Joe Wigdahl 25/7/12

Monocle Magazine: Sydney Swimming

Last month Monocle Magazine featured the most liveable cities in the world and of course, Sydney was one of them. They wanted me to travel around the Sydney area and document the people and places that makes swimming feature so strongly in the Sydney lifestyle. I traveled around the northern beaches like Balmoral and Manly and many of the eastern beaches like Clovelly, Maroubra and of course, Bondi. I'm a big swimmer myself so I was really looking forward to hitting the spots that I love and getting the chance to find some new ones.

Below is Murray Cox. It was sheer luck meeting Murray as he was the first person I met on the first morning I went out to begin shooting for the article. It turns out Murray has been swimming in Sydney his entire life and is one of those rare swimmers who has "connected the dots," which means he swam every beach in the Sydney area from Palm Beach in the north down to Kernell in the south. He knew everybody associated with swimming in Sydney and put me in touch with just about everyone else I had to shoot for this article. What a find!

It was the beginning of winter here in Sydney when I began to shoot for this article, so most swimmers had retired until spring. Most of the people I met for the article were the few hard-core all season people. When I first moved to Australia I swam year-round as I was accustomed to swimming in chilly Lake Michigan (the water temp in Lake Michigan still never gets warmer in the summer than Sydney gets in the winter) and I would happily spend an hour or so in the winter water in my board shorts. A lifeguard had come out once to check to make sure I didn't have hypothermia and I sort of laughed at the idea of being that cold. Now, a year and half into living in Oz and I'm completely acclimated and I can't go in the water for more than 10 minutes without reaching for my wetsuit and feeling like I'm going to freeze to death.

My mother happened to be visiting us from the U.S. for a few weeks so I decided that it would be a great way to show her a bit of Sydney by taking her with me to Balmoral to shoot one of the Balmoral women's swimming clubs. The women loved that I brought my mom to a shoot and my mom ended up being so inspired by the incredible fitness of these swimmers (many of whom are my mom's age or older) that she decided afterwards to join a swim club.

Joe Wigdahl 8/2/12 Joe Wigdahl 8/2/12

Good Weekend Magazine crew rowing story

A few months ago I was asked by Good Weekend Magazine to go down to Canberra and shoot images to go along with a series that they were doing about a few writers trying their hand at training for a day in an Olympic sport. I followed writer Mark Dapin as he went through a light version of the incredibly intense daily workout regimen and technique routines of the crew rower.