July 2015 | Erik Almas Photography

The challenge of finding the right location

I get to see a lot of amazing places in my work as a photographer, and at times the effort that goes into putting the camera in the right place is nothing short of mesmerizing.

 

I have dived, rappelled and jumped out of planes to get the right perspectives. We have paid orange farmers to not harvest their orange trees so that we can take a picture a few weeks later and travelled all the way to Argentina to photograph potato fields. We have chased the seasons travelling southward through the US as leaves turned into autumn colors to capture the last bit of summer foliage and we have crossed oceans to create one image of a lush underground cave, photographing caves in Alabama and waterfalls in Hawaii.

 

Erik Almas Advertising Editorial Photographer Location Blog

 

I believe few people outside the world of advertising understand the effort we put into the photographs we take for our clients…

In this pursuit of creating pictures at a specific time, of a specific thing in a specific place I have great help, and in describing these efforts I do say WE as this is truly an effort of many.

A photographer’s right hand, and conductor of this effort, is a great producer who will research, source, plan, arrange and seek permission.

 

For this assignment, done for GSW, we ended up in the small town of Culpepper, Virginia.  Seems simple enough to find a lake, but what if you tie it to a barn which style you only find in certain areas of the country and that again to a vintage tractor?

Then the simple search for a suitable location is not so simple, and I lean on my producer to make it all happen.

It starts with finding the states where this certain style of barn exists, then looking at places likely to have old restored tractors close by with a beautiful lake in the vicinity.

When the general region is decided upon we send scouts out to take images of the barns and lakes in the area. They will knock on doors and ask if the landowners would be ok for us to come by and take a photograph…

The agency creatives, clients and myself will then pick a place, show up, wait for the right light and hope all those efforts and the travel of many will result in the image we all hope to capture….

 

Erik Almas Advertising Editorial Photographer Lake

 

 

Erik Almas Advertising Editorial Photographer Barn