Last weekend I was comissioned by Revo to shoot their freshly wrapped Amarok. The brief was fairly loose; to incorporate lifestyle elements in to the photography whilst ensuring the emphasis remained on the truck.
Hit the jump to see the shots…
Revo are an aftermarket tuning company who typically specialise in hot hatches like the Volkswagen Golf and Scirocco and exotica like the Audi R8. The Amarok is a departure from their usual area of expertise, not least because it is a twin-turbo diesel 4×4 made for blasting along rutted fields rather than up the quarter mile. This diversification in to the off road sector presented us with a new challenge, as typically I shoot Revo’s cars in urban environments or on the track.
For a rugged truck like the Amarok we needed scenery to compliment it’s utilitarian image. The Lake District was decided upon and using Google Maps I scouted out the best places, all from the comfort of my office.
I allowed three days for the shoot, because the weather up there can be pretty hit or miss. That turned out to be a good idea as in the end, we only cumulatively had around a day’s worth of shootable weather. There was also no budget for an assistant, so I was flying solo with the help of Angie, my girlfriend to drive the truck when needed.
The nice thing about The Lakes is all the low clouds and mist. When the sun punches through the gaps it makes for some dramatic lighting which sculpts the hills and valleys and glistens off the water.
We were blessed with some sunshine on the Saturday afternoon which I took advantage of for the dynamic shots.
Not wanted to waste shooting time when the sun didn’t have his hat on, I took the opportunity to blow out the clouds and allow myself the opportunity of adding in a different sky in post.
The variation of sunny and moody also gave me a nice mixture of shots for Revo to use in their various marketing efforts. Sunshine and light is good, but sometimes it’s nice to have a bit of grit in your images.
In keeping with the ‘lifestyle’ theme, I bought a stunt tent to match the matte black and red of the truck and used it as a prop for some of our set ups. Ideally we’d have had models with us to add a human element to the images, but budgets and time constraints didn’t permit.
The Amarok is a great looking truck and I lost count of the amount of walkers and locals at the pub who asked about the paint job (actually a vinyl wrap). I had the pleasure of driving it around for the time we were there and it’s a very capable truck both off and on road. The Revo tuning has given it a fair whack of extra power and torque which makes it surprisingly quick off the mark and pulls well on the motorway. With all wheel drive engaged it didn’t struggle over the wet and marshy land around the lakes either. Most importantly of all though, it swallowed all of my camping and camera gear in the back with ease!
Next week I’ll be shooting the Revo sponsored motocross team and we have something special planned involving the Amarok, so keep your eye out on my Twitter and Facebook for that.