When you think of Seattle, what comes to mind? Starbucks coffee, the Space Needle, maybe the Puget Sound? What would you want to share if you were tasked with giving international tourists a primer before they touched down in the Emerald City?
Seattle-based photographer Brooke Fitts found herself asking that very same question after receiving an inquiry from Cara Magazine’s editor, wondering if she would like to help them put together a travel story on her hometown.
Cara is the in-flight magazine on all Aer Lingus flights. The airline introduced a non-stop flight from Dublin, Ireland to Seattle, Washington, and they wanted a feature on Seattle to coincide with the new flight. This was Brooke’s second travel story shot for a major airline magazine. Brooke landed both these assignments after being found on Wonderful Machine.
Before Brooke went out to shoot, she combed through her archives to find existing pictures that would fit the travel story. The client was not looking to feature too many images of coffee (synonymous with Seattle) or cocktails (a travel story staple) because Cara had already featured those topics heavily in other recent features. She ended up finding a decent number of suitable pictures among her personal work and even uncovered several outtakes from other shoots that would be great for this feature.
I love that I had creative control to pick the places I wanted to highlight and feature in my own town.
Once Brooke was aware of the images she already had, she proceeded to travel around Seattle over the course of a week shooting new pictures. The story was to run in a spring/summer feature, and she scheduled all the new shots around days that were forecasted to be sunny. Brooke shot city views and skylines in addition to a hotel and cafe.
I focused on shooting a few new images at places I really wanted to highlight to visitors. I always love a local and un-touristy perspective of a new city I’m visiting and wanted to throw that light on Seattle.
Brooke also had to track down releases from subjects that she didn’t already have them from, a difficult task that often coincides with dusting off archive images for use.
This assignment had another layer to it as well. Brooke was asked to write the copy for the Seattle feature in addition to taking the photos. She was eager to do so, even though this was her first assignment where she provided both the images and the words for the story.
Writing the piece was challenging to begin with since I’m not a writer by trade and was unfamiliar with being given a word count. As I got more into it, the story flowed much more naturally to the point I thought to myself I might like to pursue more travel writing in the future!
Three weeks after being given the assignment, Brooke turned in the images and words. The article, titled “Sea City”, ran in the April-May publication of Cara Magazine.
I actually had my real DSLR with me on a recent flight back into Seattle and snapped the shot that they ran full-page of the ferry and mountains (below). Just proves that it always pays to be camera-ready and you never know what you might get!”
Credits
Photographer: Brooke Fitts
Client: Cara Magazine
Editor: Lucy White