ABOUT

Sports 2000 needed a sportswear campaign that combined two contrasting visual worlds: gritty industrial environments with architectural scale, and dramatic natural landscape. Munich-based photographer Thomas Kettner had Scotland in mind. We proposed pairing Glasgow with the Isle of Skye, on paper opposites, together a visual range that simply does not exist anywhere else in Europe.

Across three weeks on the ground we ran a crew of around 20 with two to four models rotating, working between Glasgow and Skye. In Glasgow I secured filming permissions at the SECC and the Armadillo, landmark architectural venues that are not routinely available to commercial productions, plus the Kelpies, and I obtained CAA drone permits across the city centre. I also sourced a yoga studio adjacent to the unit base as a rain contingency, agreed and budgeted in advance, before the weather turned. On Skye, Thomas and I built Plan A through D each evening for the following day, so whatever the micro-climates delivered, we had a location and creative approach ready to shoot. Accommodation stayed genuinely flexible throughout, renegotiated as crew numbers shifted, with no penalty on last-minute changes.

The campaign delivered the exact tonal range Sports 2000 needed, architectural and human in Glasgow, elemental and vast on Skye. The combination of preparation and flexibility meant difficult conditions became part of the visual language of the campaign rather than a problem to solve. Still the shoot I'm most proud of.