As summer is nearing an end, I’m thinking more and more everyday about my next vacation. I’ve wanted to take a trip to Canada for a long time, but with a country so large it’s hard to know how to start planning a vacation there—especially when you don’t know which of the ten provinces you want to visit first!
Luckily, Vancouver-based photographer Noel Hendrickson’s recent lifestyle campaign for Travel Alberta settled that for me. His beautiful images of Alberta show the stunning landscape and the variety of trips and activities there are in Canada’s most populous Prairie province.
Noel describes his style as “street photography meets lifestyle photography, meets adventure photography.” He found his style while working on a photo project in school. He worked summers as a forest firefighter and created a coffee table book of his exploits over two summers. He considers it to be an amazing experience that is close to his heart. Whether he’s fighting fires or shooting a campaign, Noel’s connection to the landscape around him can be seen in his images. Much of his work is lifestyle imagery that captures the talent in real moments, and speaks to the brand that he’s working with.
When possible I try to put myself in the scene, immersing myself in the same environment that the talent is in. It creates a visceral response in me that helps connect to the talent and get those real moments.
Talent issues and unpredictable weather took their toll on the shoot:
We had four days of weather delays on this shoot. We were shooting in late August for part of Travel Alberta’s summer campaign and on our scouting day it began snowing. It snowed 14 inches over night, rained the entire next day and then we waited through another 2 days of summer heat for the snow to melt away. Patience is difficult to master when your entire shoot hinges on the weather. On the talent front, we had two shots planned where one of our hero talent exaggerated their abilities. For one scene we needed them swimming in the canyon waters and let’s just say that they couldn’t swim. For another scenario we needed the same hero talent standing near a precipice. Our talent informed us that they were afraid of heights and would be unable to climb the section that they had been hired to climb. I was disappointed to lose the two shots.
Even with extensive scouting and casting, some issues are unpredictable, but Noel was still able to overcome the challenges and please the client and agency with his images. Still, he was reminded of a valuable lesson.
I was reminded that finding talent who are adept and skilled at the tasks that you need photographed is imperative.
Check out more of Noel’s work on his website, noelhendrickson.com.