Seth Lowe: Precision Planting

At times, agriculture as an industry can look like it belongs in the past, even though innovative methods are constantly being developed and implemented. Precision Planting is one such innovator, and they contacted Peoria, Illinois-based photographer Seth Lowe to help make a promotional video for their new 20|20 system.

My personal goal was to create something that was a total standout in the Ag industry from an advertising standpoint. It tends to be a fairly conservative arena visually, and aside from that girl Kenny Chesney is singing about, I really don’t think many people find tractors to be “sexy”, and I wanted to change that.

So Seth set out to recruit the best possible team to work with him on the project. He had recently seen an impressive personal project from Chris Fenner in Atlanta and reached out to hire Chris as the Director of Photography.

Ironically, after I hired him, we ended up choosing a location in Georgia for the shoot, so we were able to pull in some local crew that he had good relationships with. When you have a crew that has worked together it makes such a huge difference.

Now with a knockout team behind him, Seth worked on planning out each shot to achieve maximum impact in the final result.

We wanted to create a visual connection between how products moved in real life and the camera movements in the frame, so we spent a lot of time breaking down the physical movements of various products, how people interacted with them, and building camera movements and transitions around it.

Even with all their intricate planning, every shoot encounters a few hiccups along the way. As they prepared for their 8 AM call time on the first day, the beta version of the product started experiencing some technical malfunctions. Luckily, engineers were on hand to solve the issue, but it still delayed their start until late that afternoon.

They spent the next two days working intently on completing their shot list on a shortened timeline. When all was said and done, they managed to snag the moments they needed and cut together a ninety-second spot that feels current and fresh.

Precision Planting is beyond thrilled with the video, and Seth has been basking in the glow of compliments from others in the industry. He credits much of the project’s success to the collaboration and congeniality of the crew.

I am a firm believer in that if you hire talented people, and cast vision well, you should then trust them to do what they are good at, and they will often take you further than you could have on your own, and that is exactly what happened here.  

Seth is looking forward to future projects, especially if it means piecing together another satisfying puzzle of a shoot with a fun crew and a beautiful end result.

Credits

Client: Precision Planting

Creative Director: Alex Neukomm

Producer: Brittany Garber

DP: Chris Fenner

Editor: Timothy Van Niekerk

Color: John Carrington

Sound: Ryan Pribyl

Key Grip/Camera Car Driver: Joshua Simms

Grip: Justin Powell

AC/Drone Operator: Freddie Murphy

---

Let us help you Find Photographers, source Stock Photography,
Produce Your Shoot, or just reach out to hear more!