Our 2015 Stealthie campaign for the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
Images were used for a variety of mediums, including print, digital and social.
For this project I was the photographer. This was a last minute project for me as I was brought in 2 days before the shoot. It had been shot before but the client was very unhappy with the results.
The idea behind the campaign: People capturing private moments by looking like they were taking a selfie.
The biggest challenge for me was to figure out a way to simulate the POV of a person taking a selfie using a mobile while being shot with a digital camera. Since past experience has taught me, oridnary people have a hard time interacting wih an imaginary object, therefore they needed something to hold. My first thought was to build a rig that would be mounted to the base camera. This would allow the person to hold it and give them soemthing to hold on to. After more thinking, I simplified the idea by having the person hold the lens of the camera while shooting.
The scenes were shot in 2 parts, first the special moment, a kind of background plate. Second shot was of the shooter in selfie mode using the people for the first shot to help frame the perspective.Then images were later composited in PhotoShop.This method allowed for a great range of shots and emotion for our talent, museum employees.
After completing the shoot in under 4 hours, the client wrote a thank you letter later that day saying how pleased they were the efficiency and the quality and quantity of the shots. In fact the client is one the ads!
