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Boston-based portrait photographer, Jared Leeds, recently worked with the toy and board game company Hasbro on a fun project. The assignment had Jared shooting a group of friends playing the ever-popular tower game, Jenga.
When first presented with the project, Jared was given a sketch of the concept to go by. He explains the look and feel he was asked to capture,
They wanted a lot of energy and animation, as if they models were watching the Super Bowl and a big play just happened. In the original sketch, there were chips flying through the air, a drink being spilled and a dog jumping and barking at all the commotion. In the end we limited the amount of commotion.
The original sketch also had a more family atmosphere about it, but when the set was built, Jared believe it to look more like an urban loft apartment than a family living room. He decided to run with it and took over the lighting design, adding a more moody tone to the final photo, “as if it were a party for adults.”
However, it wasn’t the lighting that Jared found difficult, it was the Jenga game itself. Turns out, the Jenga is quite the diva,
The biggest challenge was getting the Jenga tower to look just right. We planned on shooting separately and dropping it in in post, but even so, when we knocked it over it still didn’t look right. So, I had a couple of guys from the crew actually build a sculpture using a bendable metal rod in the middle and a combination of glue and drills to get the tower just right. It was the star after all.
Hasbro was very happy with the way their concept was realized. The final image was used online and in a coupon sent out in 30 million newspapers nationally. Jared was pleased with the results himself. He’s happy to have gotten the chance to shoot something he considers a departure from his typical work and credits his rep, Tracy Bennett Stewart of Zero2sixty Creative, for making the job happen,
I was happy to see how smoothly it went. Most of what I shoot is on location, shooting real people, but I found that I really enjoyed this type of shoot and would love to do more.