It’s no secret that we’ve had some big things unfolding this year. We have officially launched our creative agency HACK, with a lot of amazing creatives coming on board in many roles, we are ready to take on the world!
As part of our rebranding we have produced a series of videos highlighting the work we do and giving you a peek behind the scenes of our shoots.
We often have more than one shoot in a day and our concept for the video was “a day in the life of HACK”. We were inspired by the idea of how light changes throughout the day and how it plays such a huge role in creating an atmosphere, helping convey a sense of place, a story, a mood.
So taking the idea of letting light inspire us, we start at sunrise. Most people have heard about the concept of “golden hour”, it’s a beautiful time when we get soft golden light and it looks absolutely stunning in photography and film. It is usually the last hour before sunset and first hour after sunrise.
Our crew travelled to a beautiful location up on a Hope Mountain and set up. We used that gorgeous natural light and matched it with our own lights to lift some of the shadows from the model’s face. We wanted to portray a happy quiet solitude, a dreamy atmosphere of someone immersed in doing the things they love in a beautiful place. We wanted to show peace and the contentment of being in nature. The location and the light did most of the work for us!
Then we move on to later in the day, a bright, hot and sunny afternoon, reminiscent of school holidays, mischief, playing outside with friends. This section was all about youth, fun and play. We shot it with two teenage girls and the idea was to show playfulness, friendship and the carefree spirit of summer.
We knew we wanted to use water as part of our set up and to use the bright mid day sun to make it really come alive, glistening and sparkling just like the girls themselves, bubbly and playful. We wanted to make the viewer feel like they are right there running with them, throwing water bombs and jumping through sprinkles of water.
Then quieter moments on a swing under the canopy of an old weeping willow, two friends sharing secrets, the light came through the tree branches backlighting the green of the leaves and making it feel almost magical with it’s saturated colour, with subtle shadows falling onto the models’ faces creating beautiful patterns. You can feel the warmth coming through the images.
With this set up we maximised colour, the green of the grass and the shrubs really popped. We used some fruit trees in a selection of the shots with their deep purple plums and sun-kissed apples. Everything was glowing.
Then the sun sets and we are on a city street after dark. Cars whooshing by and catching out buildings with flashes from the headlights, sending shadows flying on the walls. Neon signs and coloured lights everywhere.
We wanted to capture that sense of electricity, mystery and adventure. From the start we knew we wanted two male models for this, styled in luxurious outfits, effortlessly cool, out to see where the night takes them. We also wanted to test drive our new flash and this seemed like the perfect opportunity, we decided to use the existing lights at various locations for splashes of colour in our shots while using the flash to light the model’s faces and create that iconic flash photography look we see so often in magazines.
The night time is a very different vibe, we wanted to lean into the fashion territory with this shoot and we worked with one of our movement directors to inject a sense of walking through the night, for shots that feel natural but “high fashion” through using angular poses and juxtaposition of models with different locations.
