Industrial Photography: Nodding Donkey Ad Campaign

A couple of months ago, a client came across my nodding donkey picture and asked me for ideas to present the image on a 2m x 1.8m billboard for their corporate ad campaign. Cropping a vertical image to fit a horizontal aspect ratio template wouldn’t produce a convincing and dramatic corporate branding — client is in the business of maintaining these nodding donkeys (also called beam pumps) among other products and services in their oil and gas portfolio. So I took the image and mirrored it back to back, tweaked the colours to give it a dramatic flair to get this composite piece.

The big print is mounted, framed and I’m told makes its appearance at a location where it gets a lot of inbound/outbound traffic. It helps that I have a computer capable of rendering such large files — the final image size was 24,000 x 21,662 pixels at 300 DPI — without much effort.

MY STOCK OVER SHUTTERSTOCK

“ Your picture and the way the light and shadow play with the sky and the water, make the nodding donkeys sexy and mysterious! And that is why I want to use it. “

A month ago, the marketing manager of Bronswerk Heat Transfer BV in the Netherlands contacted me about an image they’re interested to buy. They are a dynamic heat exchange solutions company with clients in very diverse markets such as power, oil & gas, chemicals and so forth. She explains that their present website looks outdated, too technical and above all lacks appeal.

The new website (which will be launched at the end of April, beginning of May) will be more sexy and modern but most importantly, it will clearly indicate what it is that we do, which is provide dynamic heat exchange solutions. This means that we can not only produce big heat exchangers, but more importantly we have knowledge and experience in processes and systems.

I would like to use your picture of the nodding donkey for the submarket oil. The agency that we are working with is getting their pictures from Shutterstock, however this database simply doesn’t have such beautiful pictures as the one you took. Most pictures of nodding donkeys are portrayed in a sort of dusty windy surrounding which makes the atmosphere rather desolate and wild wild west. Your picture and the way the light and shadow play with the sky and the water, make the nodding donkeys sexy and mysterious! And that is why I want to use it.

The new web page of Bronswerk Heat Transfer incorporating the nodding donkey backdrop

This photo dates back to 29 January 2008 at 06.49 PM captured using the EOS 20D/EFs10-22mm lens. The trouble with having shot so many pictures over the years is the inability to locate them without a DAM setup of some sort. My heart started to sink when faced with the reality of almost not finding the image—locating one image or even one folder of image from 4.5TB of storage is really living the “needle in a haystack” nightmare. Through perseverance I eventually found the image and averted disappointing a client. Bottom line is, I feel this image has the elements of good feng-shui and I hope my client enjoys auspicious success when they launch their new website.

A WILD SIDE OF SERIA

SHIMWORLD.com Weekly Column in THE BRUNEI TIMES

read this story on BT online

MENTION Seria town and the first thing that springs to mind is probably oil. The oil town is many things to many people who live and work here. Go beyond the obvious and explore deeper, you’ll find another name that’s just as common as it’s used and associated with Seria-hornbill. We have Hornbill School, Hornbill Apartments, Hornbill drink that’s served in Panaga Club and of course, the beautiful and graceful Oriental Pied hornbill birds that are a daily feature of our skies from dawn to dusk. Perhaps it is these iconic birds that these establishments and drink have been named after but whatever the real reason behind them, I’m delighted to see them each and every time they fly by. So much so that my daughter has developed hornbill spotting habits every time we’re in the car.

As with most mornings, the piercing cries of the hornbills penetrate the house as they go about their usual business, going from tree to tree, hopping from branch to branch and transiting on TV antenna. These pair were spotted right at the power station right across from Shell refinery. It’s amusing to see one pecking the spot light as it sees a mirror-reflection of itself thinking there’s another one of its kind. read more …

Pictures published in the BT column was taken from Hornbills in Flight 2.