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Do you know how rubber tires react to light? Richmond photographer Adam Ewing does. After working with BFGoodrich for years, he’s learned a thing or two about lighting tires. So when The Martin Agency landed a BFGoodrich account, they called up Adam to make their tire images shine.
Adam was first presented with layouts and a rough idea of what The Martin Agency creatives wanted. Alongside art director Jeremy Stabile and art producer Cindy Hicks, Adam prepped for shooting the undercarriage of trucks and their BFGoodrich tires in rural Virginia. Adam’s biggest hurdle would be to match the lighting of the trucks and tires to background stock images, allowing the two shots to later be composited together. Adam says this challenge motivated him adding, “it was interesting to create the foregrounds knowing certain images would be dropped in behind each shot, and a challenge since we did not travel to the shore, mountains or desert.”
Instead of shooting in locations similar to the background shots, Adam and his team shot at a farm near Mechanicsville, VA, belonging to the creative director’s family. They scouted around a few days beforehand to make sure the farm would “provide all the elements needed for the photos.” They also brought along additional rocks and sand for staging.
The shoot day started bright and early, as Adam explains:
We had a very ambitious day. With this type of shoot, we like to get a very early start. I can’t recall the exact call time, but I think it was around 4:30 am at the studio, then we traveled to the first location and were in place by 6 am. We set up what we needed and by the time first light hit, we were ready to shoot.
After the farm, the team headed back up to Richmond for a street shot. Adam said all went well, but found that rigging the vehicles on the rocks to be rather challenging—as well as precarious. They also had to worry about how the underside of the vehicles looked—a first for Adam who credits producer Cindy Hicks for making everything look perfect, saying:
Cindy sometimes pulls double duty as a prop stylist; she was crucial to this job, and was invaluable at helping us get the elements to look seamless.
Adam also ended up providing the stock imagery for one of the ads—the hill climb—while Andy Anderson provided the picturesque fishing image. London-based retouching team Saddington Baynes “seamlessly” handled the composites and Adam said everyone was “tremendously happy with the final imagery and loves the ads.”
Credits
Art Director: Jeremy Stabile
Art Producer: Cindy Hicks
Retouching: Saddington Baynes