Thrilled to share my latest project with Wow Hydrate and Manchester United! It was incredible to be part of this collaboration, reconnecting with a creative director I’d previously worked with. He’d moved over to Wow Hydrate’s account, bringing fresh, dynamic ideas to the table.
The challenge was clear: in past shoots, the bottles struggled to stand out beside athletes, appearing much smaller and getting lost. However, the creative director, during an initial creative call, noticed that on the super wide-angle lens of the webcam, the bottles popped out beautifully. This sparked the idea to shoot with an ultra-wide lens to make the bottles the focal point and break away from the usual lens choices.
There were a couple of twists: as a Manchester United team sponsor, Wow Hydrate had to feature three players in every shot to avoid highlighting any individual player too much. This meant balancing the presence of each athlete while ensuring the bottles remained prominent. To tackle this, we conducted a test shoot to finalize player poses, lens options, and lighting setups to have everything approved before we stepped into the room with players.
We ultimately chose a 35mm lens, which gave a compelling effect of the bottle reaching towards the viewer, just as we’d envisioned on our creative call. Thanks to this preparation, we went into the shoot confident and ready despite a packed schedule and tight time constraints. With the talented retoucher Matt Brewin bringing the final composition together, the results speak for themselves.
