Not all jobs are equal.
Some jobs you’re the main man, the head honcho, the movie star. Other jobs you’re just a bit player, the other guy, the one whose name appears way down the list of end credits. This was such a job.
The movie star in the campaign for Courvoisier Gala was Vogue photographer Ollie Ali. He was the one that flew to Cape Town with all the models, cast and crew to capture the fantastic key visuals and all the plaudits should rightly go to him.
My small part in this project as the other dude, was to capture the Courvoisier VSOP and VS bottles that were to appear at the bottom of the ads. The images didn’t want to be the typical beauty pack shots that I would normally craft out in the studio. Here the challenge was to shoot the bottles in the studio using strobe lights in a way that mirrored the lifestyle imagery, as if they were shot at the same place and time. They wanted to appear natural but not too natural.
This was a fine balance but ultimately achieved by mimicking the natural sunlight from South Africa and controlling the backlight coming through the liquid and exposing the graduation of colours of the Cognac to satisfy the clients needs.
Four sets of shots from were required from each bottle to show different angles and matching the noon and dusk settings of the key visuals. These required completely different set ups and were completed over four days along with some other serve and garnish assets required for the campaign.
The whole campaign was a great success and appeared all over London as well as globally.
