October has begun with a whole variety of editorial and commercial shoots . The stand out commission so far being an advertising shoot I’ve carried out for Playstation UK. After weeks in planning we really needed the weather to be on our side! The commissioned marketing photographs were for the Ghost of Yotei campaign launch. Capturing the cool billboards and bus ads across the capital.
The marketing team assembled early at White City, the location for the adjoining billboards. I had gone through the shot list over the previous days and had been given a good brief. My main concern was the weather and light. We were very grateful for a beautiful clear crisp Autumn dawn. I knew from the weather brief that I only had a certain amount of time before a sharp shadow would hang over half of the second billboard. I would be ready for the first shot once the artists assistant finished placing the bricks and broken sign post. My first shot was of both billboards, which turned out to be the HERO shot. I waited for the right looking pedestrian to walk through and shot the image on a slow shutter. This gave the image some ambience and some emotional context.
Once we knew we had this shot in the bag I moved in closer to capture some of the detail and photograph the finer elements in both billboards.
Pedestrians walking past couldn’t help from stopping to admire the billboard. The beautiful warm Autumn light made my job easy, emphasising all the elements of the poster. I luckily had a team keeping a close eye on the traffic racing up Wood Lane behind me. I shot all these images on an extremely wide angle lens to incorporate both posters and the underneath of the vibrant and industrial bridge setting. The photographs received good traction with 24.5K likes on Instagram and 351K views on X
After photographing all the different elements capturing the details of the bricks, broken sign post, scorch marks in the wall etc it was time to head over to Playstation’s London HQ and make a first edit of the mornings images. Once we’d narrowed the shots down to an approximate 200 photographs, we then needed to reduce the final shot list to a final 15. In the end we selected 4 final shots for SM.
The second part of the Ghost of Yotei launch was to go out and photograph the advertisements on the Bus T sides. This took a lot of preparation to enable my team to coordinate the timings of buses in specific locations which carried the Japanese advertisement. I wanted to capture the buses in a setting which instantly located it to London, but not take away too much emphasis from the T side.
This part of the campaign was definitely a challenge. London traffic is not great at the best of times. So when a bus broke down on Regent Street the whole of London’s West End came to a stand still. We soon understood that the number of buses coming through to photograph would become very few and far between. The shot that ended up being the HERO shot included the profile of a London Black Cab in the foreground. The Capital’s traditional black cab instantly placing the iconic red double decker bus to London.
The second shot a photograph detailing the side of the bus showing the amazing illustration of the band of six outlaws.
These photographs posted on X received 436K views. The two day shoot got exponential engagement and brand awareness. I was very satisfied with the shots especially after the bus timetable was completely disrupted. One thing for sure though – I hope I’m not having to photograph a bus T side for a while! As buses rarely come when you want one, you wait ages and then two come along at the same time!
You might also like
