“With the unfortunate position to speak to art and commerce simultaneously, I will say that blending the two is always a challenge but this one takes the cake for me,” says photographer Ryan Schude to the Phoblographer in an interview. “It might take a separate thread to discuss the technical and human relations aspects which were vast.” Ryan is quite a unique photographer. Where so much of the photography is done with lots of post-production later on, Ryan shot the lead image and the photo later on in this story all in-camera. They’re not at all composited — and this is a level of production that so many of us should strive for. And it’s all because of who his clients were.
All images by Ryan Schude. Used with permission. For more, please check out his website and his Instagram @ryanschude.
Those clients were Motorola for the first image and Apple for the photo coming later on in this story. Both of them wanted Ryan to use their phones, and both also wanted everything to be done in camera without using Photoshop. So of course, that means that you need to have a deep connection between the technical and artistic side of your brain. More importantly, you need quite an imagination to be able to do something like this. Ryan shot a lot of home videos as a kid — and that evolved into filmmaking and photography of his friends’ rollerblading. Eventually, that went to magazine work. When that was over, he did work to build up to the “Tableaux Vivants” work he does today. Essentially, they’re living images.
“It helps to understand that the original pitch to me was (and I’m paraphrasing) ‘let’s make a Schude image but shoot it with a phone, in 1 shot,'” he tells us. “We had seemingly no creative roadblocks and a lot of money to spend so the premise alone was beyond a dream job, it was the ideal request one could ever expect from a commercial client. Hats will forever be tipped in the favor of the two creative directors Josh McGuire and Harsh Karpadia in that respect.” He also gives extra credit to Producer Kolby Slocum and Annie Henley — the original person who pitched the campaign.
All of that to say, we all worked together for many weeks to come up with a concept that accomplished both staying true to my previous work that inspired this campaign, while collaborating to bring the whole team’s input into the equation as much as possible. They absolutely were incredible collaborators and I doubt I will find another commercial project that blended this unique approach in consideration of creating art for commerce’s sake.
Ryan Schude
The final images are better than Ryan could’ve expected considering that they drew the entire concept up from a blank slate. He’s driven by the location, narrative, and constraints that force him to think creatively. Of course, the agency and Motorola had a lot of faith in his vision.
Ryan tells us more about the lead image specifically.
Also playing into this are the many factors that affect all of my large scale tableaux. We are generally shooting at dusk, so you have roughly 10 minutes of the perfect light to capture what you had in mind. Backing up, we decided on a specific area of Coney Island as our location so there is untold amounts of constraints contributing to that outcome. Luckily budget was not one of them, we really were like kids in a candy store and could virtually do whatever we wanted given the timeline and location’s parameters. I could go on and on about how all of those details evolved and affected the final outcome but the shorter version of the story is that I will forever be stoked with how it turned out. The technical aspects of shooting and lighting for a camera phone are enough to write an essay about. At the end of the day, it couldn’t have turned out better than it did. The BTS touches on all of this a little bit but for me, the experience shooting was very congruent with the final image, a quote I will steal from Amy Feitelberg who called the whole world “controlled chaos.”
Ryan Schude
Indeed, Ryan’s images are very human — and not something that could easily be made using AI image makers. He’s got a lot to say about it — but he believes that human interactions involved in making an image are very important. “My hope is that brands, consumers, and humans, in general, will appreciate the visceral impact this single image had on hundreds of people involved in making it and millions of viewers who appreciated the effort,” he tells us. “BTS will become increasingly important to convey this aspect and it will continue to bring value to the brands if they choose to recognize the impact that goes beyond engagement. If you are looking for likes alone, you can just buy stock video of an eagle grabbing a fish out of water, which is, by the way, one of my favorite videos to watch.”
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.