Bobby Altman Helps Primland Resort Revamp Its Online Look

It’s interesting to look back at shoots that were planned in late 2019 and early 2020 for the rest of this crazy year. We took for granted how (relatively) easy it was to set up weeks-long shoots before masks, social distancing, and other COVID-induced restrictions. Take Bobby Altman’s recent commission. He was supposed to do two separate shoots for Primland Resort in Virginia — one in the spring and one in the fall — but that little global pandemic thing threw the assignment for a loop. Still, everyone made it work, thanks in no small part to the fact that most of the shoot happened outdoors and far away from civilization.

I landed the job through their agency, Rawle Murdy. The goal was to do a spring and fall shoot. However, because of COVID, our spring shoot was pushed to late summer and we took precautions with casting by finding full families and couples already spending time together and wearing masks while in public spaces.

Being around the public was minimal, though — the property consists of 12,000 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I mentioned the fact that the shoot was supposed to take a couple of weeks; it still did because of the sheer number of activities available at Primland. The kind of activities that make you go “man, as far as vacations go, this would be a fun and relatively safe.” Well, so long as you know what you’re doing on the hunting trail!

The shoot was a total of two separate weeks and we covered a lot of activities the property offers. Fly fishing, trail riding on side-by-sides, horseback riding, pheasant hunting, and stand-up paddle boarding, to name a few. My favorite thing to shoot was probably the upland bird hunting. I love watching dogs work in any capacity and a good bird dog is hard to beat.

The morning we shot that was also pretty foggy on the mountain so the light was great and it added a lot of authenticity to the images. Luckily, we were able to source talent that has experience with fly fishing and hunting so that always helps when you have people who know what to do in those scenarios.

As if the COVID curveball wasn’t enough, inclement weather reared its ugly head for both times the crew went out to shoot. Bobby credits the shoot’s producer, Lauren Turgeon, with landing the plane smoothly.

On both trips we experienced bad weather and had to adjust. It came as fog and some rain. The producer, Lauren, was amazing at getting the schedule shuffled around on the fly and still fitting everything in.

Credits:
Agency: Rawle Murdy
Producer: Lauren Turgeon, The Collaborative Co.
Hair and Makeup: Bradley Chambers

See more of Bobby’s work at bobbyaltman.com.

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