FOG LIGHTS AND Focaccia
First of all, that’s not me below. That’s my friend and fellow photographer Thomas Skovsende. We’re in Erice, a medieval hilltop town in western Sicily. Actually we were there a while back now but for one reason and another, only just getting round to sharing. I’m here in my art director role for purple creative and one of our clients. Thomas has been commissioned to create the hero image for their new campaign.
Erice sits about 750 metres above sea level. I can only describe the drive up from the airport as nothing short of ‘genuinely terrifying’. Dense fog. A metre of visibility. Dead of night and 180-degree corners on the mountain edge for a good 40 minutes. I honestly didn’t think we were going to make it. Thankfully we survived and after a short check in, grabbed our cameras and headed straight back out to recce (in the fog).
The atmosphere in this cobbled Roman mountain-top town was unreal. Thick mist, near silence, winding streets so we wandered and shot in awe. Given the lack of visibility, it soon became obvious that a 5am sunrise recce would give us a better chance of finding “the shot” so it was a sandwich, a glass of wine with the locals, and an early night.
Come 5am and navigating what felt like a network of highly territorial stray dogs who clearly had a problem with photographers, we found the perfect location. Composition sorted. Everyone happy. One major issue, we were here to photograph a sunny medieval town and by 11am, fog visibility had improved to about 2 metres. Not good! Thankfully we had another day and sure enough was greeted by an epic sunrise. We scurried back to our early morning recce location during the golden hour and Thomas finally nailed the shot!
Sicily is absolutely somewhere I’d love to revisit. What we didn’t realise until afterwards is that there’s a cable car up from Trapani to Erice. My advice, forget the drive and just take the cable car, suitcases and all.
All these recce/walkabout images are all mine (taken on my 35mm Summilux). The portrait of Thomas, is now his profile pic. “I never have anyone to take my photo,” he says. His campaign image is, as you’d expect glorious — but I can’t share that on here for obvious reasons.
