Charlie Marttila

Photography

How do you give a large content library a refresh and 4 years of new life with only two shooting days in constantly moving locations? Planning, planning, planning. I produced this shoot on a quick timeline, with limited resources, and the need to be mobile and move on a minute’s notice.

We were tasked with creating images covering business, family, and casual travel, on multiple types of rail cars. We worked with real Amtrak employees, who interacted with our model talent, and captured the joy and ease of rail travel. Focus on the experience, not the trains. Simple, right?

The shoot was a huge success and many challenges were overcome. What do you do when the train you are scheduled to shoot on is 2 hours late? Where do you put 250 square feet of wardrobe when your planned and reserved room is suddenly not available? Tip: you can get a hotel to remove all furniture from a room.

Photographer Squire Fox

CD Scott Loftus

Washington DC

Photography

Hot hockey skates, new detachable blades. Make them look cool and show the unique blade functionality. And make sure you can see all the logos, please. Done and done. A successful shot utilizing scuffed plexiglass and gelled lighting.

Photographer  Mark LaFavor

CD  Tom Lord

Minneapolis

Photography

Holiday time, and Best Buy wanted a new lifestyle look for a big print catalog; and please keep make sure ALL of the products are visible. I worked with world renowned photographer, Stan Musilek, in his San Francisco studio. 13 custom built sets, two weeks of shooting, work around a holiday weekend, suspend a $10k camera 50 feet in the air, and fly an intern and a one of a kind prototype product 1,000 miles across an international border for a last minute inclusion. PS. He had a great 3 hour stay in San Francisco.

Photographer  Stan Musilek

CD  Bob Goebel

San Francisco

Photography/Compositing/Retouching

Mall of America needed a campaign to tout their designer brands and showcase their unique indoor attractions—in the same photographs. We worked with Nordstrom and Sea Life to place a model in a swarm of sharks, and with Burberry and Nickelodeon Universe to give a dapper man a ride on the Log Chute. Lots of coordination with vendors, attractions, and the mall were required to make this work without shutting down any part of the mall. It took nearly 20 photographs to piece these final two images together, requiring massive image compositing and CG work. 

No sharks or talent were harmed in the making of these photographs.

Photographer  William Clark

Compositing/Retouching  Brad Palm

CD  Nina Orezzoli

Bloomington

I have hundreds of print samples collected over the years. They show best in person. Shoot me a message and we can setup some time to review pieces from my catalog that best fit your needs.

Packaging Design/Project Management/Photography

When Barbara's asked if we could update their brand and redesign all of their packaging, we said, "Absolutely! Do we get free cereal?" We created a packaging system that worked across 30+ products for kids, adults, and snackers, giving the brand a more modern look while also ensuring they stand out against their competitors. We created a library of cereal and flavor cue images for the packaging and made sure they would work for future marketing efforts. And, designed new characters that illustrate all of the fun Barbara's products bring to the table.

Designer  Heidi Schwieger

CD  Mike Schacherer

Photographer  Ken Friberg

Minneapolis

Photography/Compositing/Retouching

How about a ride on a sunrise train! Embracing a need to get people out of the winter doldrums and thinking about spring rail travel, we created these images by merging actual train images into more dramatic backgrounds. Bump up the drama and have some fun with trains.

I secured the rights to use the train images from amateur photographers and train enthusiasts. Brad Palm made everything fit together.

Compositing/Retouching  Brad Palm

Train Photography  Ben Wang & Chase Gunnoe

Stock Images  Getty & Veer

CD  Dan Sheehan

Minneapolis

Packaging Design/Project Management

Working with a brewery can be a lot of fun, it is also a lot of work. The number of new beers Fair State Brewing Co-op produces is phenomenal. It was a big job managing all of the labels, social, ad, and sales element design for this client, but all the hard work came with big rewards and beautiful labels.

CD  Mike Schacherer

St. Paul

Video

What’s a pitch these days without a cool brand video to set the mood? We showed the client how an evolution of their brand and a new tag line could look.

Editor Collin Pittier

CD  Ryan Inda

Minneapolis

Packaging Design/Project Management/Print

The guys at Fully Melted were ready to launch onto the California cannabis scene, and they needed packaging. As a startup, the cost was a major consideration. We designed a versatile, inexpesive, and easy to use packaging system that allowed a single box, three standard belly bands, and three customizable stickers to be mixed and matched to fulfill all nine of their launch products.

CD  Mike Schacherer

Humboldt Co

Photography

Vacuums, fake kitchens, messy kids, and more vacuums. We built five 1/2 sets and three full sets to help Best Buy showcase appliances from big to small in their inaugural Appliance Guide. Navigating each manufacturer’s requirements while meeting Best Buy’s needs, and making the images look awesome was the challenge for this shoot. Success! Nothing sucked. Except the vacuums. Which helped in a major way with cleanup.

Quiz: can you spot all of the product placements in the kitchen? (Hint… there are 11).

Photography  Best Buy Studio

CD  Cara Albrecht-Ostrom

Minneapolis

Photography

P.F. Chang’s was launching a new menu with fresh and simple ingredients, WOW Plus. We made the ingredients the star of the show and featured them ahead of each finished dish and drink. Over 100 jicama auditioned for this shoot.

Photographer  Laura Flippen

CD  Jim Specht

San Francisco

Photography

Amtrak’s image library was small and aging. We took on the task of replacing the entire catalog. We shot business, family, and casual travelers across all of the different booking classes and train sets on two different coasts. This two week shoot was a massive undertaking; coordinating talent, crew, wardrobe and train cars around the country.

Challenges abound on this shoot and the weather (on both coasts) decided not to cooperate. But failure is not an option for me. Favorite take away on this project: Lesson #45-How to make sure the gaffers are grounded while holding down the lighting stands in the middle of an unexpected L.A. thunderstorm.

Photographer  Joel Larson

CD  Amy Pressnall & Dan Sheehan

Washington DC & Los Angeles

Photography

For the second year in a row I produced Best Buys holiday catalog. This time we decided to use real locations (8 to be exact) instead of built sets (well… we did cheat and built a laundry room). We traveled around the Twin Cities to find houses that we could use to welcome the Holidays in August.

Photographer  Bob McNamara

CD  Amy Pressnall

Minneapolis

Photography

Bauer produced limited release Supreme sticks in the jersey colors of the founding NHL teams. A quick shoot was in order to give these cool throwback sticks some attention.

Photographer  Mark LaFavor

CD  Tom Lord

Minneapolis

Photography

For the launch of Dunkin’ Donuts own brand of coffee creamer, I produced all of the launch packaging photography, and these super fun thumbs up images, for the web campaign. Sometimes you can search for weeks for the perfect coffee mug, and it just happens to be sitting in the cupboard of the rented studio. Always keep your eyes open.

Photographer  Mark LaFavor

CD  Chad Nauta

Minneapolis

Photography

I produced a series of photographs for Target Optical to use on direct mail and in-store signage. Lots of fun with talent and more eyeglass frames than you can shake a microfiber cloth at.

Photographer  Joel Larson

CD  Amy Martin

Minneapolis

Video

We traveled to Chicago to spend the night at The Great Train Story, in the Museum of Science & Industry, for Amtrak’s Holiday video campaign. This huge exhibit provided lots of locations to shoot our model Amtrak train. Overnight shoots often come with unique challenges. This one… the huge, and highly reflective, 727 United airliner hanging over the model train set.

Videographer  Paul Irmiter

CD  Amy Pressnall and Jim Specht

Chicago

Photography

When Best Buy and the Geek Squad needed to refresh the images for their Black Tie Protection service, I headed to Denver to recruit real Geek Squad Agents to strut their stuff for this fun campaign. They became the ‘hidden’ protection for the products Best Buy sells. Something only the Agents with the black ties can pull off.

Photographer  David Mejias

CD  Amy Pressnall

Denver & Bolder CO

Photography/Compositing/Retouching

Amtrak’s Winter Promo required members of their Amtrak Guest Rewards program to book train travel during the winter months to get free travel in the summer. We created a series of images, depicting trains in winter, and their identical twins in summer. These images could them be animated online, or shown with a physical reveal in print, depicting winter changing to summer. Maybe those long, cold North East winters can be a little easier with the prospect of sunny days and free travel ahead.

I secured the rights to use the train images from amateur photographers and train enthusiasts, and Brad Palm brought the magic.

Compositing/Retouching  Brad Palm

Train Photography  Robert Pisani & Joe Osciak

Stock Images  Veer

CD  Dan Sheehan

Minneapolis

Photography

I produced a super fun series of photographs featuring Minneapolis’ own advertising elite, for our local advertising awards show, The Show. These images were featured online and in the awards catalog. Our crew scavenged the local thrift stores to find outfits to lovingly dress these hot creatives, who graciously gave us their time… and humility.

Photographer  Joel Larson

CD  Janay Blazejewski 

Minneapolis

Photography

Amtrak needed a few updates to the photo library we had created a few years earlier, and we only had 1 day to photograph everything. My experience shooting on trains was crucial to the success of this shoot. And our ability to work fast and light was absolutely necessary. We jumped onto active trains as the public disembarked, and worked behind the cleaning crews, until we were forced off to let a new bunch of passengers board. We knew exactly what we needed to shoot, and planned the day down to the minute. But experience really pays off when the Secret Service suddenly shuts down your platform, and Joe Bidden decides to take the train back to Delaware. We were forced to scrap our original plan and rebuild the schedule for the 2nd half of the day on the fly. No problem. I’ve got this.

Photographer  Joel Larson

CD  Dan Sheehan

Washington DC

Compositing/Retouching

Want to illustrate the speed and control you get from a Nexus skate? You can’t go wrong when your photographs are taken by Gary Land. And when Abe Sands is on board to take the image to the next level, magic is going to happen.

Compositing/Retouching  Abe Sands

Photographer  Gary Land

CD  Tom Lord

Boston

Photography

Best Buy was launching a new product called Pitch In, and they needed help executing a photo shoot for the brand. They needed images of happy people in front of colorful backgrounds. No problem. We had walls created to match their brand PMS colors, and cast a colorful mix of individuals to express the excitement of the program.

Project Bonus - I had a conversation with Anthony Hopkins, who was working on a project in the studio next to ours. Project Bonus Bonus - I got to work all week with the photographer who shot Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album cover.

Photographer  Dave Nagel

CD  Jim Specht

Los Angeles

Photography

I produced the photography for Best Buy’s Promo Pack catalogs for three years. My job was to take their standard product photography to the next level, and show a select grouping of products in compelling and intriguing compositions. The goal was to make the photographs in the Promo Packs unique from the typically images seen in newspaper inserts and the online store. These images made the Promo Packs feel special, and drove customer engagement; ultimately increasing sales.

Photographer  Tom Matre

CD  Randal Herrera

Minneapolis