There are only a handful of competitions I participate in each year so when one of my images makes it on the judges short list or if it receives a top ranking of any type, I’m always thrilled. It’s even sweeter when the image takes 1st Place….thank you, American Photographic Artists.
My Arctic Ocean image from the 5 Oceans Campaign, which was created for the Barcelona, Spain based fashion eyewear company, Sea2See this spring received 1st place in the conceptual / altered category.
This image is one of 5, which was created to show the global issue of ocean plastics and how it’s effecting our environment, but there are some companies who have embraced sustainability and are acting to make a difference. Sea2See is one of those companies who harvests ocean plastics to use in 100% of all of their products, from Italian made eyewear to Swiss made timepieces. The challenge with this series and others in the campaign was not being able to travel to the locations all around the world to capture the landscape personally, so I spent the time hunting through stock photography sites to find pieces of locations that would allow me to build an iconic landscape to resonate with the viewer to instantly recognize the location as one of the five oceans on the planet. Along with stock photography, multiple photoshoots were scheduled to photograph models, product and details/trash, which would help create the conceptual narrative of each image.
This arctic image was created from 5 different stock photos and 15+ photos I personally took to gather all the images needed to create one final image to make a positive impact on illustrating the mission of client to promote their product.
To view the other images in this series, visit the 5 Oceans gallery on my website.
