Forest road with sunlight breaking through the trees

Photography series · Nature

Cold Morning, Clear Run

For: Running brand campaign
Location: Black Forest, Germany
Scope: Photography · Editing
Published: 10:00:00 26/09/08

A spare study of a forest road, low sun and the focus that arrives before the first kilometre. The empty tarmac, the restrained palette and the long shadows reduce the morning to weather, movement and a single clear line.

Almost nothing

The brief was a running campaign without a runner in the frame. The road does the work: it goes somewhere, and the light tells you it is early. We shot it over two mornings, the first foggy, the second clear, and used the clear one; the foggy frames went into the second half of the story.

The art director wanted breath in the picture. You cannot photograph breath at six degrees without a person, so we photographed the things that stand in for it: mist on the lake at the end of the road, birds leaving, the moon still up.

Silhouette of a fisherman casting a line into morning mist, in black and white — The lake at the end of the road, the first morning. Photograph by Collins Illich.

Four birds in flight against a pale, empty sky — Four birds leaving, the second. Photograph by Stephanie Gibeault.

A campaign about running with nobody running in it. The client took a week to agree and a day to love it.

Crescent moon in a black night sky — The moon at the top of the frame, still up at seven. Photograph by Xavier McLaren.

The kit

One body, a 50 and a 135, a tripod I did not use, and gloves I should have brought. The road was shot at f/8 for the shadows to stay sharp all the way to the bend; the birds at 1/2000, handheld, from the car park, because they did not wait.

Almost nothing

The kit

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