Julie Bidwell was hired by ad agency, Adworkshop, to work with Visit Catskills and shoot an ad campaign for the Catskills mountains, a 700,000-acre park in New York. The national park is frequently overshadowed by the Adirondacks despite offering a flurry of attractions, from golf courses to beer tastings to kayaking. Visit Catskills wanted Julie to show the Catskills off as the adventurers’ dream vacation destination they believe it is. So, Julie set out on a four-day excursion to capture everything the park had to offer.
The advertising agency was responsible for all of the preproduction logistics, allowing Julie to focus on her individual creative strategy. A thorough preproduction process is always valuable but when the shoot is out in the wilderness with no cell reception, it’s vital. With no quick calls for replacement batteries or laptop chargers, the crew needed more than one contingency plan. Eight models accompanied Julia, along with a team of two producers and an art director. Julia split her time with a three-man video crew—she says they were awesome to work with.
With handheld shots and limited artificial light, Julia was able to capture exactly what the Catskills are all about: escaping from everyday life, experiencing the raw beauty of nature, and of course, beer.
The greatest thing was just spending 4 days traveling all over the Catskills in glorious weather and shooting.
The team at Visit Catskills was thrilled with Julie’s work. Julie herself loved seeing that some of the shots that were trickiest at the time of shooting wound up being the best in the bunch. “Sometimes the shots I think are not working end up being great,” she says.