Miratorg, one of the world’s largest producers of meat, recently hired Russia-based photographer Stanislav (Stas) Solntsev to shoot captivating imagery for the brand’s marketing efforts. Stas was commissioned to shoot images of its large organic farms and the ex-pat American cowboys that now live in Russia to teach Russian farmers their techniques.
Miratorg is a long-term client of Duck Soup Production, a production house that Stas works with often. Miratorg hired Duck Soup for two projects in the past that Stas shot images for, which took place in Portugal and Moscow. Miratorg loved the collaboration between Duck Soup Production and Stas, so its team hired Stas and Duck Soup for their most recent project.
During the preproduction portion of the project, Stas spoke with the executives of Miratorg and its marketing directors. Together, they came up with a shot-list and a plan for execution. With lots of trust from the client, Stas was allowed creative freedom on this assignment. Stas and the head producer at Duck Soup have a lot of experience with advertising photography, so they worked together to come up with many original concepts to create a compelling visual story.
After creating the shot-list, Stas and his team still had many detailed discussions with the owners of the farms and their farmers, about timing and location for each scene being captured. The team also had to check the local river and lake to plan the shots of the horses running into the shallow water. On top of that, the team monitored the fields, stables, hills, etc. to make sure they had the proper resources in place to create their vision.
The shoot itself took place over the course of three days in the Bryansk region in middle European Russia. They were long, busy days that began at 3 am and lasted until midnight the same day. Stas worked with two assistants and hired a special effects company called PyroFX to help create fog in some of the final images. The farms are enormous, and each day the team set up shop in different parts of the farms to capture the right image.
My producer was wearing an Apple wrist watch which measures the number of steps you take during the day. In total, each of us took over 25,000 steps a day, which means we walked approximately 20 to 25 km a day!
This experience was enjoyable because Stas got the opportunity to learn about the American cowboys who Miratorg hires. These are American farmers from the mid-west who have been compensated to pick up and move their families to Russia, in exchange for teaching local herdsmen their techniques. With such powerful imagery, it’s no surprise that Stas’ favorite part was being able to illustrate a visual story through his photos. The campaign has just launched, but the reactions to the photos have been excellent, thus far. The images are being used on many different media platforms such as outdoor and in-store print ads, online use, and many more. Plus, the pictures are displayed across 30 major cities in Russia!
See more of Stanislav at stanislavsolntsev.com!