Mirae Asset Management, "Your Bridge to Opportunity"

The final image, full scale structure and studio model combined.

I was commissioned by Stepworks in Hong Kong to create the key image for Mirae Asset's "Your Bridge to Opportunity" campaign, a shoot that turned out to be one of the more technically demanding of my career.

The concept called for an impossible looking bridge, a sweeping ribbon of white structure rising out of open ground with a small group of figures standing at its base. To make it real rather than composited from nothing, we built the piece twice over: full scale sections on location, built specifically for the shoot, that the talent could genuinely stand beside and hold, and a precise scale model built and shot separately in the studio. Combining the two convincingly, so the final image reads as one continuous, believable structure, was the heart of the challenge.

The location shoot itself added its own pressure. We needed a clean blue sky, no cloud, no haze, shot on a UK airfield in November, which is not a month that cooperates easily. Casting was also exact, since the brief needed a specific look and bearing from the group standing at the bridge. Working closely with my set builder and the models over what became a very long, very cold day, we got the light, the structure, and the studio elements to align, and the combination held together exactly as the brief intended.

Raising the full scale section on location.

The image in use, in Mirae Asset's corporate brochure.