Legionnaire spirit
PR photography takes you to some unusual places – often places that the general public don’t get to see. It could be behind the scenes at a theatre opening, an adult-toys trade convention, or the finishing line of the Dublin Marathon. In this case, it was somewhere the public can pay to visit, but it was well out-of-season – Vindolanda Roman Fort on Hadrians Wall, in the depths of Northumberland.
The client – Doddingtons Dairy, had just developed a range of ice-cream flavours that had allegedly been created by the Romans when the wall was actively used for keeping out the swathes of northern savages. The idea was to go up to the fort, with a Legionnaire, and shoot some general publicity shots for the press campaign which was forthcoming. All very well, except it was January 10th, the temperature was 2 degrees, with frequent snowstorms being dragged in on 40mph gales, which made it well below freezing.
I turned up at 9am, with a whole wad of kit, including clothing that would allow me to survive the day. Neil – the MD from Doddingtons, had brought his young daughter to dress up as a junior Legionnaire, and we had a very experienced member of the team who often role-play battles & events for the Wall. I did a quick scoot around the place, and returned with news that it was going to be a very, very tough shoot due to the freezing conditions. The sun was in and out, but I needed a bit of lighting to give the shots some impact, so set up a couple of speed lights on stands, and weighed them down as best I could. Once I was set up, I got the gang up to do the first round of images.
The poor little girl was like a trooper. It was a 15 minute walk up to the site, and I spent another 15 minutes shooting various stuff. It was simply too cold for her to spend time out there with just a light costume on, so I gave her my jacket, and one of the Hadrians Wall heritage staff took her down to the visitors centre to recover. No such luxury for the rest of us however – we battled onwards and upwards to the fort itself.
Now this is when the weather started to give us the extent of its savagery. A huge hailstorm – complete with horizontal shards of ice, piled in from the north, resulting in the whole team seeking refuge in the fort interior for 30 minutes. It was getting colder by the second, and I didn’t have any gloves – a total killer. My kit was standing up to the low temperatures ok, so we set about doing some quirky shots. My fave, is the one of Neil & the Legionnaire staring each other out while holding pots of the ice-cream out to the camera. Totally corny, but effective. I shot into the sun, using the two figures in silhouette. A single flashgun at full power, with no diffusion was fired into them to give a gritty sort of look, and rim-lighting around them both. The shots were processed in Lightroom using a preset called “300”, which emulates the tones used in the US, gothic TV series of the same name.
Once the press images were completed – (and we did all sorts of different angles, including one where I climbed, perilously, to the top of the turret to gain some elevated shots), I let the people disappear, and I set up some simple product shots on the walls of the fort, overlooking the barren surroundings. I finished, packed my gear away, and traipsed down to the comfort of the visitors centre for a cup of instant coffee, which was probably nasty, but tasted like the greatest thing I’d ever drank at that moment.
The shots were used all over the local & national press, (although they always use the boring images, and never seem to use the ones I like best) and the image of Neil staring at the Roman was used all over the place in the shops and deli’s where the ice-cream was sold. I’ve never been back to Vindolanda since then, but It certainly looks like a great day out as long as it’s not minus ten. Don’t know how the Romans hacked it for so long.
