I'll bet you're wondering what happened with the bear costume. No? Well I'm going to tell you anyway. When Calumet asked me if I fancied taking on their Hasselblad Challenge I thought about it for, well, about 2 seconds or so and then I said yes. Let me explain… a small group of photographers were selected and given the following brief: "Here’s the latest 50 million pixel Hasselblad, there’s a big white studio - go shoot and may the best image be displayed" or words to that general effect!
Now I normally shoot to instructions and themes provided by others, so I couldn't wait to get my thinking around this one. After calling on a few friends from the advertising and creative industries a plan began to form. Something urban, showing off the studio and the camera’s capability, images that could be polished if we chose, perhaps some slightly weird stuff happening to amaze and confuse and, with the fantastic 28mm lens available, it had to be wide!
Bizarrely, I just couldn't get the idea of a bear on a bike out of my head. I don't know what that says about me. As it turns out, the cycling bear shots just didn’t cut the mustard and ended up on the cutting room floor, but some of the other shots are pretty spectacular.
In total we had 9 people on the shoot who all gave their time for free and favours (don't ask, I won't tell). From Peter, the videographer to Mike, our friendly bear, I thank you all! We'll be releasing some of the images soon but in the meantime here’s a behind the scenes shot, taken by Tomasz.
