Christmas presence

Advertising campaigns are great things to work on. I would never class myself as an advertising photographer in the strict sense, but my work often crosses into that genre, in that the images used are licensed for usage in advertising campaigns for a period of time. In this case, the job in hand was to work with the Barbour visual merchandising team in order to create a number of square format images to be used in a special Christmas store window display (a spectacular advent calendar featuring different jackets and mid layers with gifts in the pockets), and to adorn the carrier bags in all the retail stores worldwide. My stylist for the day was the London based Paula Carney (Now based in Belgium actually). Paula is one of the UK’s best clothing & visual merchandising stylists – she has some big name clients on her list including Harrods, Argos, Canada Goose, Burberry, and many more. She can produce visually stunning sets from anything.

We set up & shot about 30 different frames utilising wildly different colours and textures – the whole gamut of the clothing range.

The main shot was next up. We needed something special, as this was going to act as a full-bleed image on a matte-printed full colour shopping bag. After some experimentation, the VM director plumped for a dark purple quilted jacket with a gold-wrapped present and bright red bow. everything just worked visually. I lit the set directionally, using a single large softbox to the right, skimming off the surface to give some texture to the quilting. A white reflector was positioned to the left, to bounce a little bit of light back & soften the shadows. 

This was the final shot. It’s always nice to see your efforts realised in print, but the final item was brilliant. I kept a couple of the bags for posterity. Nice work when you can get it.