Be a Mazda owner and you’ll live an active and adventurous, but also luxurious lifestyle in a car that can handle anything. This is Mazda’s pitch in its recent customer magazine featuring the new Mazda 6 station wagon.
The story was shot by Berlin-based corporate, advertising, and editorial photographer Markus Altmann, featuring the station wagon pulling a special trailer for gliders off the road and onto the field. Markus has a personal affinity for flying in general, which the art director knew when they decided to get him involved.
After some deliberation, Markus and the crew settled on the well-known flying field “Klippenek” as their shoot location— a mountain on the Swabian Alb and Germany’s highest soaring site.
Soaring planes are out mostly on weekends and when it’s at least partly sunny, because without sun there are no “thermals,” meaning columns of warm air rising up in which sailplanes circle to gain altitude. (Who knew?) For this reason, the shoot was actually postponed four times before the weather decided to cooperate.
In the end, the 2-day shoot produced a lot of good material, which Markus and the client were happy with.
What did he learn from this project? “Don’t put too much trust in GoPro’s suction cup hold on the wing of a glider 3,000 feet in the air.” Luckily, a bit of additional Gaffa tape saved his day, as it held the GoPro Hero 3 camera when the suction cup failed.