© Adrian Armstrong

No, this isn’t some dystopian future where the arms of criminals are locked up in groceries, household appliances and china vases. This is someone whose hands are full and can’t open the boot of their car. Riding on the idea of a “hands-free” feeling, Mike Lo Nam and Abeer Verma of Y&R Toronto enlisted the prowess of Adrian Armstrong to communicate their idea, and he did so with incredible realism. “As we realised there would be quite a bit of post-production in this project,we had to plan accordingly to bring as much realism to the images as possible,” says Armstrong.Directing the models was an important part of the process, and they were able to compare the props to the model’s arms and have them either extend or withdraw their arms to compensate for the size of each of the props.

“Once we had the final selects of our people images, we then shot the objects to match. This was done using the image of the person as an overlay in Capture One. Having that image as an overlay while we photographed the objects allowed us to get the perfect angle, perspective and light that in the end result would match the person seamlessly,” says Armstrong. All this planning made the shoot smooth from start to finish.

Photographer: Adrian Armstrong www.adrianarmstrongphoto.com
Campaign: Ford Liftgate
Client: Ford
Agency: Y&R Toronto
Art Director: Mike Lo Nam
Writer: Abeer Verma
Creative Director: Jonathan Smith
Chief Creative Officer: Israel Diaz
Producer: Mario Pariselli
Production/Photographer’s Agent: Fuze Reps
Retoucher: Adrian Armstrong