Graham Winterbottom Photography

Thanks to Grant for finding!

Recently we had the opportunity to shoot for Best Buy Canada  to showcase their tablet and net book products for National in store signage. Over 2 days we produced five different lifestyle scenarios which involved building an airplane (well, a portion of one) and prioritizing religious texts (ask me later).
A big thanks to Best Buy for the opportunity and to Sarah Tesla and Niki Kendall at MAKE for once again making things go smoothly. Also my crew for their hard work and the models for their patience and performance.
Here’s a few shots from the day, see all the finals under the ‘new work‘ section on my main site.

A couple years back, photographer Pieter Hugo of Cape Town, South Africa came out with a striking portrait series titled ‘The Hyena & Other Men‘. The portaits were of a group of men in Lagos, Nigeria that kept Hyenas as pets, like dogs on chains. Rumour was that they were everything from drug dealers to thugs though they actually used the animals as a touring road show. Hugo toured with them for 8 days and produced some startling portraits which quickly spread through the web, resulting in several gallery shows and a book.

Fast forward to May 2011 when pop diva Beyonce Knowles releases a video for her new track ‘Run the World‘. The videos theme is a post apocalyptic world, stylize a la Mad Max, where girls ‘run the world’ and in one particular scene has Ms. Jay-Z herself holding back 2 hyenas with chains. This has illicited some comments by The Guardian UK that she has appropriated the images of Hugo without due credit to his work.

As the article point out, it is a fine line between appropriation and homage and personally I think the similarities are slim, you can see for yourself below. I think the real question is who does a better post-apocalypse video, Beyonce or Tina Turner?

Thomas Stanley Winterbottom, born Sept 4, 2010
is the biggest and the funnest thing in my life right now, leaving not much time for anything else. Less posting, more living.

Recently we did a lifestyle production for a client where we teamed with the talented RJ of Brudder Productions to create a complete cross media package of both still and motion work. When you’re shooting both it can be tough to move swiftly but we managed to generate a lot of material in just one day amongst four different locations up the coast from Vancouver in the beautiful Porteau Cove.

Here’s some behind the scenes shots of the day. Thanks to all the crew and talent for your hard work!

One of my favourite shows on HBO right now is True Blood. Here’s a hilarious apology from ‘Brian’ of the HBO marketing department, courtesy of Digital Kitchen, the agency responsible for the excellent opening credits sequence from the show.

True Blood Season 3 Campaign – “Awkward” viral video from DIGITALKITCHEN on Vimeo.

The Stanley Cup playoffs were great, and the NBA is ok but what I’ve been waiting all year for is the World Cup.

The ads have begun pouring out and all are pretty great. Nike’s much hyped ‘Write the Future’ is simply amazing and I watched it multiple times after seeing it, but after seeing this Puma ad I have to give it a second thought.

Obviously each ad is trying to accomplish different things but what resonates with me is how Puma captures the authentic emotion and feeling of football on a community level rather than just the standard angle of putting athletes on a pedestal.

A few weeks ago I had a post about the video shoot that myself and Caleb Beyers of Beyers Projects did for Westbeach Snowboard Apparel as a preview of their 2010/2011 line for the Telus Ski & Snowboard Festival in Whistler.

So here is the final product. Many thanks to Sugar Studios for their great shooting space.

Music is by DFA Recording artists YACHT