I was employed to attend all the Land Rover or Defender sponsored equestrian events in the UK and provide imagery for internal use, both for marketing and reporting.
The competition was photographed to include the client’s branding wherever possible and to focus primarily on Land Rover’s Ambassadors if they were competing.
I would begin each event by recording each element of the client’s branding on its own. Branded fences, trade stands, signage, product itself and so on. this was useful for the client to show how the “activations” had been set up in their event reports.
During the events I would be photographing the various branded activations in use, whether that meant a horse jumping a branded fence or members of the public using one of the activations or talking to a member of staff.
Occasionally there would be specific activities which involved the brand ambassadors with one of the activations and I would make sure we covered that well.
Different events would require different coverage. For example, at Burghley, the Defender hospitality area by Lion Bridge would have a stream of invited guests each day, enjoying a cooked lunch and getting to meet top riders while they are interviewed, just for them. This inevitably means there is quite a demand on my time and I often have to manage being in several places in a very short time period.
This brief calls for a more varied than usual set of photographic styles, with the social and commercial situations needing different choices of lenses and angles to the sporting arena. The ability to get drone footage was valuable as it provides an establishment view of the whole event.
In between events I provide the storage and access to the library of relevant images for Debbie and her team. This means that wherever they are they can download a specific image of an activation, brand ambassador or action shot at short notice.
Many of the brand imagery is also used by the marketing teams for the events themselves, so my photographs regularly appear on event programmes and websites.
