House

13 Oct 2005

I worked for a while at a newspaper, where one day we needed some real estate promo ads put together. I was given the job.

I thought about it and quickly came up with the idea of a minature house. Great! But as is always the case, finding just the right stock photo was impossible. So I pondered the options a bit more and remembered many a childhood day spent building some paper model or other... Bingo! I'll build my own, shoot it and hope marketing go for it!

In no time at all I whipped up the plans (much quicker with Illustrator than by pencil & ruler!) and to add that little bit extra, glued a sheet of real estate ads to the house. Cut, score, fold, glue. Even remembered the chimney!

Thankfully it was a quieter day so I was able to spend some time setting up the shot, which proved tricky when I wanted the pages of real estate ads to stretch off into the distance, and the ambient light was the typical crap office fluorescent. But take enough angles, exposures, perspectives etc and something has to come out. And it did.

I mocked up the ad; the marketing chick loved it. In fact, she loved it so much she asked if she could keep the little house! Plus, my ad with my shot ran at 200x200mm right on the front page for about two or three weeks in a row. And each weeks distribution was about the 80,000 mark. Pretty cool to think about it that way.

Wish I'd been able to charge for the shot!

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Now endorsed by my mum: "I love it!" she said.