by Liz Ream
Dom Romney has perfected the art of “illustrating the automobile and the incredible love affair we as a society have with them.” He has traveled to every continent doing so, with his most recent endeavor being to Iceland to shoot Land Rover’s global launch campaign for the new Discovery Sport.
Because Land Rover vehicles are incredibly capable and made for unpredictable terrain, the company likes to demonstrate this with real images in real environments, making Dom’s “unretouched” style perfect for the job. However, it did make for some difficult shoot days:
With this being launch images and not an ad shoot, its a little bit looser and the images aren’t as locked down as they would typically be. There is a lot more freedom to go and create what you see rather than the stamp that the client has signed off on . Shoot days where long, we were fighting against really horrific weather, torrential rain and at times wind that you could barely stand up in, let along use a 10 foot flag in.
Furthermore, Dom and his crew had to work around the fact that the car didn’t officially exist at the time of the shoot, so no one outside of the crew could see it. Dom worked with a team of guys who “can cover and uncover a car faster than you would think possible.” This, combined with the turbulent weather made for extremely small time increments for Dom to get the winning shots.
This was an immensely technical shoot— if it wasn’t for the fact the we had an incredible solid grounding on what, where, how and when everything was going to happen, it simply wouldn’t have been possible to use the small windows of weather that we had to achieve what we did.
Dom left me with some wise words for new photographers:
Shoot what you enjoy, always shoot what you enjoy. If you’re not enjoying it, its not worth shooting and don’t be afraid to say no if you don’t think you’re the right person for the job.
For more of Dom’s work, check out his website.