Advertising campaign photography for the watch makers Timex. This series of photographs including outtakes and print layouts is of American BMX biker Robert Barranco, British DJ Andy Lemay and Brooklyn based fashion designer Aurora James all photographed in their real life situations for Timex creative designer Giorgio Galli.
With Robert Barranco the brief was to picture him in action wearing a new design Allied LT Chronograph for release in the fall of 2019. My assistants and I met up with Italian artistic director Pier Francesco Pazzi at a roller park in South London and we set Robert off to see what tricks he could manage in the half bowl in order I could arrest his routine at the strategic moment. Being early morning we had strong sunlight against us so Robert would be backlit when in the air which meant we had to light him with enough fill-in flash to see any detail. Run after run was made in the hope we caught him just right before we dashed off to the second location of the day, another smaller roller park covered in bright and varied graffiti which produced the first 3 pictures though they ended up as outtakes.
I suggested we get Robert weaving through London traffic so we headed off to our 3rd location, Picadilly, where I sent him out with a walkie-talkie ear piece into the dense traffic while I stood between the two lane highway, much to the annoyance of disgruntled motorists, while Robert did his stuff. Finally, after what was a long and exhausting day we made for St. Katharine’s Docks to get a sunset shot of Tower Bridge and the Shard skyline on the Thames.
Our second London subject was disc jockey Andy Lemay who we met at a vinyl record store in north London. This, a more sedate and relaxed shoot, involved concentrating on getting the watch he wore just right; eliminating reflections while keeping a balanced lighting to show off the true colours of the watch face and strap. All shots were made within a perimeter of a few hundred meters of our record store location so as to use the limited time we had with him to maximum benefit.
The final destination was Brooklyn, New York, where I met up with young fashion designer Aurora James in her boutique. This proved more complicated than I had bargained for as we hadn't managed to gain control of what she would be wearing beforehand nor had we seen the cluttered location in detail. My assistant and I decided to keep the lighting to a bare minimum and rely more upon reflecting daylight into the tall windows with poly boards thereby avoiding lengthy set up times in the knowledge that we had been allocated only 3 hours to complete 5 different shots.
These photographs were destined for Timex's social media and print campaigns and can be found on their Instagram feed and selected magazines worldwide.