Late last year, I shot a fun lil project with DDB for Miller Lite that ran full-page in the November issue of Rolling Stone. I’ve never been one to scrawl my own poems or drunken rants onto the walls of the many bars I’ve visited in my years, so it was fun when the agency decided they liked my handwriting the best and I also got to play the role of drunken art director, in addition to (sober) photographer.
We shot this on a weeknight in one of my favorite Chicago neighborhood spots, The Charleston.
To get technical for a moment, the big challenge on this one was keeping the foreground wall element reserved for copy in focus while also not letting the background Miller Lite neon become too soft so that it wouldn’t be legible. Of course we could’ve just shot plates of both sides of the frame in sharp focus, but I strive to keep things authentic whenever possible and didn’t want to create two different focal planes in the one shot. We ended up shooting at f18, iso2000, at varied shutter speeds and using a couple strobes at high power to light the interior of the dark bar and foreground false wall. It wasn’t the easiest approach but I think helps better sell the realism in what is otherwise a rather manufactured image.
Huge thanks to everyone at Miller & DDB along with my small crew Brad, Josh, Dave and Cooper.
Cheers!