Adam Ewing: Where The Rubber Leaves The Road

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. He prepped for shooting the undercarriage of trucks and their BFGoodrich tires in rural Virginia, alongside Jeremy Stabile (art director) and Cindy Hicks (art producer).

Adam’s biggest hurdle was to match the lighting of the trucks and tires to background stock images. This allows the two shots to later be composited together. He 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.

Adam and his team decided on a farm near Mechanicsville, VA, which is owned by the creative director’s family. The farm “provided 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 rigging the vehicles on the rocks was rather challenging, and precarious. They also had to worry about how the underside of the vehicles looked. This was 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 provided stock imagery for the hill climb ad, while Andy Anderson provided the picturesque fishing image. London-based retouching team Saddington Baynes “seamlessly” handled the composites. Adam said:

[Everyone was] tremendously happy with the final imagery and loves the ads.

See more of Adam’s work on his website.

Credits

Art Director: Jeremy Stabile
Art Producer: Cindy Hicks
Retouching: Saddington Baynes

Further Reading

Read more about Adam on our Published blog.

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