Page 43 - Advertising Annual 55

THE VOORHES
a half­formed thought, the other one says, “Oh, yeah, I get that!” Sometimes, Finlay says, she’ll worry something’s stupid or immature—like the idea that came to her, a few drinks in, to shoot a beaver clutching a dildo for a WIRED sex toys story—but the magazine will often go for it, even love it. “Sometimes it’s just the absurdity or willingness of where they will push something,” writes Bennett, who has worked with the Voorhes studio at various magazines since 2008. “Have you seen the beaver they shot for us at WIRED?”
“Often, I’ll want to execute three or four of their ideas,” says Ryan Cadiz, director of photography for Money maga­ zine. “They always come back with an embarrassment of riches.”
Even the studio’s name is an innovation, a sign, perhaps, that the days of the lone photographer are numbered—if they ever really existed. Few have taken the pair’s full creative and romantic plunge, but Cadiz says, “I think there are more people willing to say, ‘I’m not the sole creator for this one thing.’ It used to be [that] the genius goes away and makes something and you don’t get to see behind the scenes. In this case, it’s great to have two geniuses go away and make something and both get the credit.” ca
Left: “This image was the opening art for a cover story that ran in summer 2012, discussing the holes in Texas’s then-latest comprehensive water plan, which provided some of the state’s residents with more water than they needed while leaving others high and dry.” T.J. Tucker, creative director; Leslie Baldwin, photo editor; Texas Monthly, client.
“O, The Oprah Magazine was doing a feature on women’s bodies. We were asked to create conceptual still life representations for the gut, mind and sex organ. The gut ended up being pink-and-purple crazy straws carefully layered together, shot macro.” Kirby Rodriguez, creative director; Melanie Chambers Abramowitz, photo editor; Christina Weber, photography director; O, The Oprah Magazine, client.
“This was also for Reader’s Digest’s ‘How to Crack Your Sugar Addiction.’ The image was made using a pellet gun and a sound trigger device Adam has called the ‘Mumford time machine.’ One levitating lollipop was photographed over the set as the base image. For the explosion, lollipops were clamped into place by their stick while, across the studio, Adam set up a pellet gun with sandbags on a rest. Adam would take aim with the lights on, we’d flip the lights off while our assistant, Nick Cabrera, opened the shutter, then Adam would shoot.” Deb Wenof, photo editor; Rebecca Simpson Steele, photography director; Reader’s Digest, client.
This page: “Details magazine needed art for a story about nootropic supplements, which supposedly enhance mental performance. A graphic lightning bolt made from the supplement Alpha Brain was the answer. The pills were arranged on glass and backlit so we could keep hard shadows on just the white tablets, not the surface. Everything was held down with transparent double-stick tape to keep them from sliding off the table.” Rockwell Harwood, creative director; Stacey DeLorenzo, photo editor; Details, client.
“We received an article from Details about trends in men’s teeth and how manufactured-looking, super-perfect, white teeth are going out of style. What people want is to improve their smile while keeping the little imperfections that give a man’s mouth personality. In all, we got twelve unique dental molds from the mid-1980s.” Rockwell Harwood, creative director; Stacey DeLorenzo, photo editor; Details, client.
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