New Portraits with Rough Cast Talent Agency
A few weeks ago I was thrilled to discover that there is a new talent agency in Sydney called Rough Cast Talent. It's a great idea- it focuses on featuring models that are unique, unusual or just happen to look like every day people and are great in front of the camera. This is a great new resource to have here in Sydney and I've been waiting for years for something like this to show up. When I lived and worked in Chicago I used to use "real talent" casting agencies and casting scouts all the time. I loved it because I felt like there were times when a project really needed to have models that gave the images a sense of authenticity or relate-ability to the viewer. Traditional modeling agencies never really worked for me because their talent were just too good looking and perfect or what the advertising industry would call "too aspirational." I'm really into the "flaws" that make a person who they are and those unusual details that can sometimes be character defining in an image.
When I saw that Rough Cast had opened up shop I immediately got in touch with the owner Chris Mayer-Plummer to see if I could shoot portraits of some of their talent. They needed portraits of their talent to send out for castings and I really wanted an opportunity to start shooting some of these fantastic faces that Chris has access to. It is FUN. I've met street performers, burlesque dancers, a Catholic energy worker/healer, a Satanist energy worker/healer (I didn't even know that existed), comedians, labourers and just normal people who want to be in pictures. I can't wait to do more.
OPSM ad Campaign in Napier, New Zealand
OPSM-NZ-Vintner
I recently wrote a post about an ad campaign that I shot for the eyewear retailer OPSM in Busselton, Western Australia with Saatchi & Saatchi. The images below are just a few of the shots that I did for the brand to tell some of the stories of the everyday people in Napier, New Zealand. I love New Zealand- aside from having incredibly beautiful landscapes the people there are quite beautiful and agreeable in their own right. We met a huge range of people from architects, designers, farmers, fisherman, tractor mechanics, vintners and even a Scottish bag piping corps and I felt blessed to be able to meet these people, hear their stories and shoot in such an intimate way. We shot there for a week and I averaged 16 hour days and took portraits of over 50 people and plenty of landscapes and I was exhausted in the end but really had great shoot.
Portrait of young woman bag piper and pipers playing
Landscape panoramic of Napier, New Zealand
Portrait of mother and young baby smiling
Portrait of young welder in workshop
Man jogging on Te Mata Mountain, New Zealand
Portraits of women men wearing glasses
Portrait of small scale train conductor repairing steam train.
Portrait of Architect working on drawings with a lamp and table
The town and its surrounds are an interesting mix of 1930s art deco architecture and farms offering fresh picked cherries, figs, berries and veggies everywhere we went. I ate some of the freshest, tastiest food I've ever had and we felt welcomed by friendly faces everywhere we went. If you're ever there, be sure to check out the lovely people at Aroha and Friends.
OPSM Ad Campaign in Australia and New Zealand
I recently spent several weeks traveling and working with Saatchi & Saatchi on a new ad campaign for the eye wear retailer OPSM. The job was a really exciting project for me to be a part of because it picked two small towns- Busselton, Western Australia and Napier, New Zealand- and found people of all ages and walks of life who use and need their product, eye glasses. Saatchi & Saatchi scoured through Australian and New Zealand census data to determine a town in each country that encompassed the broad range of types of jobs, incomes, ethnicities etc. that represent each country. We met with bushfire fighters, a horse whisperer, a bagpipe marching band, a master jeweller and a beekeeper just to name a few. I was really excited by the notion of shooting my favorite subject in advertising work: real people with real stories. These are just a few of the shots from Busselton, Western Australia. I'll post images from the New Zealand campaign which was shot in Napier, New Zealand in the near future.
Like most of the large productions I've been working on lately, I was shooting alongside a TVC production that was filming spots for TV and the web, while I was shooting images for the new catalog, website and everything print- in-store, billboards etc. We shot every day for 10-14 hours a day for 2 weeks and I ended up shooting portraits of over 100 people and a lot of landscapes along the way. Most days I would shoot alongside the TVC crew, grabbing shots when I could and stepping in when the TVC guys were done or had a few minutes to hand the subject and location over to me. In each city I had a day to shoot 25 portraits a day which broke down to a new location, set up and portrait every 20 minutes or so for 9 hours. An exhausting but exhilarating exercise as the opportunity to meet new people with great stories just kept coming. At one point I ended up getting pretty emotional at a small town bag piper rehearsal after feeling so lucky that these people would allow us to come in and be a part of their private experience, something I would have never been able to know about or be a part of if I was on my own traveling through this small town.
At the end of the 2 week assignment I'd shot portraits of more than 100 people, was tired, sore and really missed home but damn, I enjoyed that job. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
CD: Matt Gilmour Sr AD: Nils Eberhardt Sr Copywriter: Veronica Copestake The TVC/Motion campaign was produced by Tobias Webster at EXIT Films and directed by Stephen Carroll.
