Viewfinders Keepers: Who wears Havaianas?

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Who wears Havaianas?

Here's something rather commercial yet spontaneous on my blog.

This is my first commercial shoot for a product/company and initially, I was hesitant to accept the offer primarily because of my lack of self-esteem. I usually shoot only with my friends or family as the models basically because I feel more comfortable with them and that I don't worry of meeting their expectations. I guess that is also why I like shooting in the streets more than the typical model-photographer set-up. But despite my significant lack of self-esteem, I accepted Visionaire's offer to shoot their Havaianas 2012 collection for their retail stores - Red Dot, since I am about to start working in the corporate world in a month and realized that this could be my first and last commercial shoot.

I never expected shooting children would be this challenging. Being the kids that they are, they are really hard to control (I had to chase them around) and have short attention span (apparently, shorter than mine, which is to say alot) - they easily get bored and impatient in a split second. Nonetheless, we managed to finish the shoot in 2-3 hrs.

Visionaire's CEO wanted a prominent but well-reputed family in the local area as the models, since they will be representing the product and the store. Surprisingly, we had a difficult time coming up with a role-model type family in Ilocos. Also, she wanted it to look home/locally-made and spontaneous; nothing too professional and overboard.

Tiring and stressful this shoot may have been, I am more than happy with the outcome and I'm so glad to know that the client was happy about it; so much that she was hoping that I would shoot their upcoming collections and products in the coming year... which I hope I would be able to fit in between my schedule.

The photos will be used for their stores' online catalogue and will also be displayed digitally on ipad2's as new marketing tools for their stores.

I would like to thank Visionaire/Red Dot for requesting for me and offering me this opportunity even when there were far better photographers available. :)