Shooting in my hometown of Trondheim Norway

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I grew up in Trondheim, Norway.

19 years ago I left for the US to study photography and eventually ended up staying here creating a life and career.

 

My heart is still in Trondheim and when I got introduced to the local advertising agency HK with the possibility of working with them on some great creative I got really excited.

The brief was to create a winter wonderland out of the town square and the shopping center sitting at the end of it…

At the time I was in Namibia so with desert sand between my toes I started thinking about turning the square in my hometown into a fashion winter fairytale.

The challenge; It was fall and another month or so till snow would start falling.….

I do love this kind of challenge. It get’s my mind going on how to craft a beautiful visual without having the right elements to work with.

How do we make winter before there’s snow?

How do we turn buildings into Ice?

There’s a lot going on in this process and in it all I’m both a photographer and director. I take pictures and but also work with and direct icemakers, CGI artists and retouchers to all come together to craft one single photographic moment…

 

Check out the behind the scenes on how it all came together.

 

 

 

Big thanks to the AD agency HK, Thomas Juul, Art Direction, Chris Bodie on retouch, Hacjob on CGI, Leila Hafzi for supplying the dress and Another Production in London for putting it together in a really short period of time.

 

4 responses to “Shooting in my hometown of Trondheim Norway”

  1. Jurek Gralak says:

    Hey Erik,
    You did once more a beautiful masterpiece! I really love your work and i’m very impressed the way you work. You take all the best ingredients from photography, 3D modeling, photoshop and merge it to a congenial masterpiece! I’m really, really impressed! Please go on further like this!

    Best wishes Jurek

  2. Joe says:

    Fascinating BTS… thanks for posting… but I have one question. What was the point in even shooting anything in Trondheim town square? At 3:45 in the video you basically replaced 100% of the shot with your CGI buildings, a sky shot somewhere else and a (CGI?) snowy ground. You then composited the model who was shot in a studio on to that. So there is literally nothing of the actual town square in the image.

    Wouldn’t it have been cheaper just to do everything from some studio wherever you happened to be?

    Of course, I realize in this case you’re probably more than happy to go to this particular location… but in general, what’s the point of going to any location at this point?

    • admin says:

      Hi,

      If you were to turn a place into something it is not wouldn’t you go there and see what this place is like?
      To be there and get a sense of the place and a true reference of what the place is and how you as a photographer see this space?

      If you are shooting a job for a client would you not owe this client to be there and put your camera down to shoot the image you would have done regardless of it being snow or not?

      I would answer yes to all these so I flew back to my hometown to shoot a true reference that encompass my sensibilities prior to doing any post work.

      Even though we replace this frame it’s the same frame. But changed into winter…

      Hope this helps.

      Best,

      E.

  3. Ventimiglia says:

    Hey Erik!

    I’m very thankful for all your BTS vids and pics. It is so interesting seeing all those steps and being efficient on that.

    As a viewer I asked myself some question and maybe you can give me some hint.

    I would like to know for what you shoot those ice models of that place in Trondheim. Are they meant for “material” issues in Maya? Or “just” for lighting research what a building of ice would look like under these weather circumstances?

    Thank you and keep up that professional work.

    Marco

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