The Hardside Project

Sometimes you just get a concept in your head and you want to see if you can pull it off.

When trying to come up with marketing concepts and photography for the Hardside Series from Lowepro. I got this idea in my head and wanted to see if I could actually shoot this scene in my new micro-studio (more on that later). Rather than going out into the field and producing another shoot with an already over-taxed team. I wanted to see if the core properties of this new hard case could be strongly conveyed in the simplest of terms.

The micro-studio is just that, lens-limitingly tiny yet quiant outbuilding that I reclaimed in the name of needing to put all my camera shit somewhere or else… So I figured… why not line it with visqueen and fill a tank full of water, smash things with hammers and play with some lights!  Add some buckets of mud, spray bottles and my trusty splitting sledge maul and its hijinks for the whole family. My wife was very patient and as it turns out… good at hitting things with a sledge hammer.

To round off the story, these shots were only intended to be proof of concept, but things happen and deadlines keep rolling. To my surprise, they ended up being tapped for used in Lowepro’s  global TRUSTED campaign. One point of note is these are not the retouched shots on which Creative Services spent long hours manicuring my gnarled fingernails.