Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Steve Bonini and Alter...Create Winter in Summer of 2011


 Happy New Year Everyone!!

 This Nike Campaign was featured on Workbook's Blog in November 2011.

I am embellishing it with more photos and comments from Abe Finkelstein, with ALTER, who helmed the retouching process. 

During the searing summer heat of 2011, Steve Bonini shot a running apparel campaign for Nike, "The Holiday 2011" campaign. The images were published in the late fall and winter months.

Below are Abe's comments.

Abe:  " For me, one of the challenges in the rain images involved adjusting every part of the image to compensate for the severe change in lighting. 
 
 The images were shot in high contrast daylight (heavy shadows and highlights with heavy directional lighting). The final image required a low contrast overcast sky (softer shadows and highlights with minimal directional lighting). 

 The other challenge involved filling the entire image with rain. The image was shot with a rain tower, but this only covered the area directly around the talent with rain. This rain from the tower also had to be adjusted to interact with the new background feel.

  
Then the other 80% of rain had to be filled. We created multiple CGI rain environments and incorporated them to make the rain look natural with the concrete overpasses and rain from the tower."    A.F.
  The challenge was to create lots rain,

 a layer of frost, 



and the dark of night

  in order to show off Nike's rain repellent and dark reflective gear. These effects were created when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature hovered around eighty degrees.

"We combined real time effects and post-production retouching by Alter in Chicago. Using rain towers, fake ice crystals, and a collection of ominous storm clouds that we dropped into each scene to give a dark, wintry look, we got the images to evoke the weather even before handing them over to Alter."  S.B

When the project was done, they had pushed the calendar ahead by four months!  A wonderful collaborative effort by all involved.  The images are outstanding!

http://www.stevebonini.com
http://www.thinkalter.com