Karan Kapoor shoot stills and video for Royal Caribbean “Barbie Experience”

Karan recently spend time on board the “Allure of the Seas” – the world’s largest cruise liner – to shoot both video and stills for his latest commission from client Royal Caribbean. For the “Barbie Premium Experience”, the Royal Caribbean cruise liner brand will be going pink, as you can see from Karan’s shots here. The “Barbie Premium Experience” will launch in January 2013, and Karan’s shots and video will be used to promote the experience. (Read more after the images.)

This isn’t the first time Karan has shot for Royal Caribbean: he also worked on this big-budget advertising campaign for the cruise brand, with his images transforming NYC’s Times Square shuttle into a cruise ship holiday experience during February 2012.

For this job, Royal Caribbean wanted video footage and stills photography to promote their “Barbie Experience”, aimed at girls aged 4-11. “It was a crazy shoot,” says Karan, “and I had to shoot the stills and video at the same time. With lots of child actors and models involved in the shoot, it was very busy as you can imagine. Each shot had to be replicated three times to include a little girl from each of the three ethnicities which Royal Caribbean wanted represented. It was pretty crazy!”

The shoot was held on the Allure of the Seas (the biggest cruise ship in the world) as it set sail from Miami and around the Western Caribbean. “I didn’t get to see any of the sights,” says Karan. “In fact, on a ship of that size, you don’t even necessarily see the ocean! The cruise ship is so huge, and we spent all of our time inside.”

And here’s the video which Karan shot as part of this job

This was a direct job which didn’t involve an agency. “It was nice to work with this client again,” Karan says.

Look out for a future blog post on the shoot he did for Dreamworks.

Credits:
Client: Royal Caribbean
Photographer: Karan Kapoor
Production: Jenn Kim/ Anderson Hopkins
Marketing Manager: Addy Lubin
Retouching Stills: Siniisa Savic
Video Edit: Mat Sunderland / Sunipa Pictures

Karan Kapoor shoot stills and video for Royal Caribbean “Barbie Experience” is a post from Karan Kapoor’s blog. His main website is here.

Royal Caribbean Cruises video project

Although he is best-known as a successful commercial and editorial photographer, Karan has a keen interest in video and its use in multi-media projects. He was recently commissioned by Royal Caribbean Cruises, the high-end cruise company. As part of a big-budget advertising and awareness campaign, the Times Square shuttle in New York City was transformed into a cruise vacation experience throughout February 2012.

Karan’s input into project had two parts: video work, involving shooting interviews with passengers and staff of Royal Caribbean Cruises and and filming seacapes, and photographic work using seascapes and shots of the ship itself. The videos and images were then used to turn subway carriages into replicas of the cruise ship, as part of the innovative promotional project.

“I’ve done video work in the past,” said Karan. “These days I believe that all photographers should be able to do both, as most commercial jobs demand at least one short bit of video to go on the internet or alongside a banner ad. This was a bit of an unusual commission, though, as I was originally only asked to do the video but then ended up taking the photographs, too.”

Karan describes one particular high point of the shoot: “We needed to get aerial shots of the bay in Haiti,” he said. “In order to get the shot, the Art Director and I ended up on a parasail, which was great fun but a bit terrifying. We got the shot we needed, though!”

These images show snapshots of the resulting installation.

Photographer: Karan Kapoor
Client: Royal Caribbean
Agency: J Walter Thompson
Art Director: Carlos Fernandez
Art Buyer: Sara Clark

Royal Caribbean Cruises video project is a post from Karan Kapoor’s blog. His main website is here.

Commercial photography for the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship

Just before Christmas, Karan was asked to shoot the promotional images for the HSBC-sponsored Abu Dhabi Golf Championships. It was a whirlwind job: Karan flew to Dubai on the Friday, shot on location at the Abu Dhabi golf course on the Sunday, spent part of Monday in a Dubai studio and was home doing post-production work late on Monday. The job was finished on Christmas Eve.

The tournament, which finished a few days ago on 29th January, is one of the biggest events on the PGA European Tour. This year’s event was won by Englishman Robert Rock, who held off giants of the game including Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

The brief given to Karan from Tristan, the Creative Director at JWT Dubai was “the giants are coming” and so the notion of giants formed the heart of this commercial brief. Each shot for the campaign needed a Gulliver’s Travels feel, to signal the arrival of golfing’s greatest. The images demonstrate gigantic versions of players and their kit with spectators and families looking up in awe as the sport’s finest gather to compete.

The campaign needed to not only encourage golf fans to come to the tournament but also had to appeal to families and couples who could have a nice day out on the golf course.

“I really enjoyed this job,” said Karan. “It was a joy to work with Tristan and Joseph at JWT, and all credit goes to Hikmat, the production manager from Magnet Photo Productions, who did a wonderful job of pulling everything together in such a short period of time.”

Agency: JWT Dubai
Creative Director: Tristan Fitzgerald
Art Director: Joseph Alipio
Retouching: Sinisa Savic
Production Manager : Hikmat Ghandour (Magnet Photo Productions)

Commercial photography for the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship is a post from Karan Kapoor’s blog. His main website is here.

Skyride photoshoot campaign

Skyride city events are a nationwide series of summer events aimed at encouraging people to get on their bikes. In 2010, over 200,000 people took part in free-mass participation rides all over the UK.

Karan was asked to shoot the campaign used to promote the 2011 events. It’s a major campaign with a production to match: a section of London’s Embankment was closed off for the purposes of shooting, and more than 20 models of all ages were hired for the day.

“There was a real range of ages amongst the models,” says Karan, ”from grandparents to toddlers on bikes with stabilisers. The one thing they had in common was that they had to come hurtling down a steep bit of camber towards my camera lens! They all had to ride so close to me that I needed an assistant on each side to protect the camera lens – just in case! Thankfully nobody fell off their bike, but some of them were a bit shaky and I’ll admit to being a little worried at times. Thankfully there were no accidents, just a couple of close calls!”

The campaign was actually shot during the 2010 Skyride event, and there wasn’t a lot of space for the action-packed shoot. To get the images, Karan had to lie on the ground (for about 10 hours!) and shoot upwards. “The remit was images which were full of movement and action, portraying a range of real people enjoying cycling,” explains Karan.

Although Karan has done work in the past for Sky, this was his first time working for Sky Creative and with Christopher Ringsell.

CLIENT: SKYRIDE
AGENCY: SKY CREATIVE
HEAD OF PRINT CREATIVE: CHRISTOPHER RINGSELL
STYLIST: LOU DE VILLE

Skyride photoshoot campaign is a post from Karan Kapoor’s blog

Friends Life commercial shoot

When Friends Life insurance company launched, they commissioned Karan to shoot for this multi-media campaign. The brand was to be launched with five images and accompanying videos.

The shoot used five different locations, as you can see in the images and videos in this blog post: a beach, mountain, dirt road, dance studio and football pitch and the setting was beautiful Cape Town. Karan recalls a fun and challenging shoot which resulted in great images.

“The Friends Life insurance shoot was exciting,” he says, “because it had a video element to it as well as stills. We had bad luck with the weather and there was a small child crying on the beach throughout the shoot, but we got there in the end!

“It was great to work with Richard and John, the Creative Director and Art Director. All in all, this project was a very enjoyable one to be part of.”

As mentioned, this project involved creating video as well as stills. The video clips are at the end of this blog post; do take a look.

CLIENT: Friends Life
AGENCSY: CST the Gate
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Richard Hayter
ART DIRECTOR: John Taylor

Friends Life commercial shoot is a post from Karan Kapoor’s blog.