The creative and art directors of Dickies loved Texas-based photographer Scott Slusher’s style of western photography. They needed his experience and perspective for a shoot that could capture the essence of a day in the life of a custom chopper shop. Scott’s style was ideal to achieve a true grit narrative that the Dickies brand is all about. The team planned to start at the Chopper Shop and get some strong images of “the boys” working on bikes and follow up with a road trip to a local BBQ joint – having fun along the way of course.
With garments ranging from high-performance work pants and shirts to women’s workwear and denim, 95-year-old American brand Dickies has grown into the number one manufacturer of work apparel in the world. Dickies offers maximum-function workwear. It provides its customers with year-round styles. These styles demonstrate the durability and comfort that the modern worker needs. This makes Dickies an easy American favorite.
Scott’s job was to make every shot feel life-like. To make the shoot as natural as possible his team scheduled scouting days for the shop and BBQ restaurant during pre-production planning.
Other than scouting the locations, Scott was given creative freedom to do his work. He started off by meeting everyone involved in the project and got a chance to get to know his subjects, which always helps them get comfortable while he is shooting.
The photo shoot had its challenges and Scott had to be a quick problem solver to make every shot count.
No matter the client, we are a team working on a project at hand and we need to make each and every idea come across on camera. Communication is key on every job.”
Shooting became chaotic when it came time to capture their burnout shot. When the rider began accelerating to create smoke, he wrecked, and for a split second, Scott stopped shooting. After the split hesitation, he quickly started shooting again to get it all on film. Thankfully the rider was fine, however, his bike was in pretty bad shape.
Despite the burnout damage, Scott considers his Dickies shoot one of his favorites of all time. Dickies made it easy for Scott to be creative and it shows in the final images. Scott was able to capture the quality, toughness, and pride that every piece of Dickies workwear embodies while successfully showing the spirit of the modern American worker.
See more of Scott’s work on his website.
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