The ongoing ad campaign featuring trucks decked out in outlandish situations for Schneider Finance took a competitive turn with this racing scenario straight out of NASCAR. To accomplish the needed look, nearly two dozen separate images were combined and retouched.
The first order of business was finding and shooting a truck stop fueling island. Shooting in late January just southwest of Chicago, we found the right spot and quickly made the critical exposures on which the entire shot would be built. Bright sunshine was essential, as all the other existing shots were shot in full sunlight. Within half an hour of shooting, heavy clouds moved in and snow began falling which would cover the ground for the next four weeks. A close call, but we were heading back into Chicago with the wipers on high and a Compact Flash card full of solid images.
The truck itself, with a plain white paint job, was pulled from existing files on hand from Schneider. We then digitally repainted it yellow and gave it a hand-painted "flame job", along with numbers and a crossed-checkered-flag "Rolling Thunder" logo emblazoned on the roof air dam and side panel. Two checkered flags flapping in the breeze were added to the mirror brackets to finish the look.
The pit crew presented a tricky problem, in that we had no budget to cast and stage them for a live shoot. Instead, we used ten slides from coverage of Schneider's NASCAR racing team, selected for their perspective and lighting angles as well as the tasks they were performing. Some members required limb and head angle adjustment along with placement of various items in their hands.
Assembly of all the images took place over a period of two weeks, with work-in-progress images emailed to the client for comments and suggestions. The final ad, part of a series illustrating the possibilities of the owner/operator lifestyle, ran in trucking trade magazines nationwide. Many thanks to Mary Fawcett of Mad Dog Marketing for her patience and great ideas.