It was supposed to be THE mega billboard; 48m long, 20m high alongside the factory underneath the BAYER cross in Leverkusen, Germany.

To find the most spectacular bridge is not an easy task. Everyone has his or her favourite. The X -bridge was ideal for the client, because of the X in the brand name and Sao Paulo is a great destination for photography.

Our hotel was just across the canal by the bridge. But this canal was filled with a black, smelly liquid carrying all kinds of dubious objects, which would be impolite elaborating on in detail. .

Finding the right point of view during recce saw us climbing over fences and putting in track-and-field dashes when crossing an 8-lane freeway. Luckily, for the shooting day we managed to receive a permit for using a private road.

Once in the city center, even though we only had a few hours to spare, we had to see some of the incredible architecture downtown and ate tons of meat in a famous Churrascaria, .

Finaly the Öresund Bridge, near Copenhagen with it’s very different design, turned out to be the perfect shape for the mega billboard.

MUMBAI

This project required a fair amount of pre-production, mainly because it was not easy to get in touch with the right people in India.

In fact, it was with the help of my local network, that we finally got what we needed. But this was just the tip of the iceberg.

We were officially allowed to shoot on the sports field of a school on what is normally a quiet Saturday morning. But no! A big sports’ event nobody knew about was in progress. Our bus with 50 kids and teachers from a “Save the Children India,” project was due to arrive. We had to move to a far corner, but this turned out to be at our advantage, because it was much shadier.

Working with so many children can be difficult, but they were so nice, quiet, well-behaved and the teachers so helpful. Berthold just could not stop shooting and we all shared their happiness.

CHINA

Plane, trains, motorways, cities, parks, all in one shot

This idea was from scratch a “Photoshop” post-production shoot. The plane, trains, motorways, cities and parks, all had to appear in the final add.

Shenzhen, China was the obvious choice for the skyline location and in actual fact more then 50% of this was created from one shot. Several photos where merged to create the final art work. Other parts where shot in Hong Kong and the neighboring Canton province, around the Pearl River delta, which is greener and not as densely populated.