On a cold wet day in Invercargill, I took my client to the Arizona desert! Here’s how we did it…

I recently helped one of my long-term New Zealand clients* develop a marketing campaign for an important Trade Show in their US market.

(*Clogger. They make the world’s best chainsaw protective pants. As well as a bunch of other stuff. All designed and made right here in Invercargill, New Zealand.)

Working together, we were able to develop a campaign of messaging and a series of images to communicate key product features in this competitive market.

We realised early in the process that staging complex photoshoots in far-away locations was unrealistic given timing and budget constraints! So we decided to harness the power of AI.

Ideation.

We weren’t short of ideas ourselves, but there are AI tools which allow us to quickly iterate several ideas to explore composition and placement. It can really help in those early stages to rule things in – and out of consideration. What works as well as things to avoid. This can really speed up this part of the process.

*The basic process! Background setting + Studio product shot + retouching = Final Image*

Pre-production and planning.

In the all important pre-production stage, we used AI tools to build our high resolution images in all the aspect ratios we would need for the final composited image. My retoucher – part of the team from the outset – made sure we understood the lighting in the final scene so that I could replicate it in studio when it came to shoot day. This is super important for ease of compositing and the ‘believability’ of the final result.

*The finished composite image carefully combining real world studio photography of the client product with an AI generated scene.*

Shoot day.

I was able to bring a portable studio set-up so that we could work with minimal fuss at our client’s factory. And while these behind-the-scenes photos don’t look pretty, they do show how with good planning you can turn images captured like this into a very polished premium result.

The final composition(s).

*Our series of images in their first outing in Detroit, USA.*

Takeaways.

We learned a few things on this project. Here’s a summary of some of them:

AI can be useful for fast ideation and visualisation of concepts
AI is useful for other team members to work with your rough visuals (copy writers, retouchers, producers etc)
AI allows you to stage a shoot literally anywhere you can imagine. And some places you cant.
Your shoots dont have to be ‘weather affected’
Although AI is not carbon zero by any means, it’s probably a lot better than flying teams of people around the planet to make shots like these.
With a good team of creative professionals around you, almost anything is possible.
Close integration of the team is vital. AI tools can help get every one on the same page.
Used appropriately, AI can be used to save time and budgets!

One small step for man…

So if you or your marketing team have an idea for a photo shoot on the moon – but not quite the budget for it – hit the button below to get in touch. There might just be a way we can make that moonshot!

Help me get to the moon

A real world AI case study.